Several readers objected to my recent post Harkening back to the golden age. As so often happens with Pastor Doug Wilson, the defense is not that what he wrote is correct, but that I’m being uncharitable for not assuming he meant something different than what he wrote. OKRickety wrote in defense of Wilson (emphasis mine):

To be clear, I will say that I am not of fan of Doug Wilson’s writing style. It is not easy to read and excessively lengthy, tending to obfuscate what he wishes to communicate.

I think Wilson’s perspective on the “times” is that today we have so-called “servant leadership”, whereas before (in what he unfortunately calls “normal times”) we only had feminist claims that normal masculine behavior often (always?) led to bluster, bullying, etc.

This is a standard defense of Wilson, and one that were I Wilson I would strongly object to. OKRickety is saying that Wilson, after blogging and writing dozens of books over a period of decades, is quite poor at his craft as a writer. Not only that, he is implying that Wilson’s stylistic claim to fame, of being a “hard hitting” Christian author (his theology bites back!), is untrue. If OKRickety is correct, instead of being a hard hitting author who tells it like it is, Wilson is in fact a producer of muddled bombast. This is a cruel defense, and with friends like these Wilson does not need enemies.

It is possible that OKRickety has the benefit of a close personal relationship with Wilson and knows from experience that Wilson gets it right when say discussing an issue at the local fishing hole, but disaster ensues whenever he puts his fingers to the keyboard. I think it is more likely that OKRickety is merely assuming he knows what Wilson means to write, so that no matter what Wilson writes, it must always mean what OKRickety assumes it means. Anyone who thinks otherwise must be biased.

Either way, as a result of my responding to what Wilson actually writes instead of what OKRickety knows Wilson meant, OKRickety says I’m being unfair, and guilty of poor reading comprehension:

I think the crux of our disagreement is that I think Doug Wilson’s post is indeed quite correct in regard to Christian masculine behavior, but your post makes great effort to throw shade on Wilson. I just don’t understand why you and others are so nitpicky about Wilson’s post, seemingly having a greater desire to find fault than recognizing the ample positive. Sure, I’d like for him to be perfect in his statements. I’d also like it for you and all of the commenters here, but I have not found that to be the case.

On top of that, it is my opinion that many claims of Wilson’s red-pill failure display poor reading comprehension or faulty presumptions about his motives. In other words, the claims are faulty.

In my opinion, Wilson is on the same side as you and most of your readers even if you don’t like his playbook or style of play.

I would suggest that instead of assuming Wilson is muddled in his writing, that OKRickety give Wilson the benefit of the doubt and assume that he is in fact writing what he wants to write. Moreover, if Wilson happens to be writing the opposite of what he intends, pointing out the logical flaws is doing Wilson a great service, as it offers him the opportunity to write a correction.

Part of the difference, I believe, comes from the glasses through which we read Wilson’s stuff. To those who come to the red pill through a hard fall, his moderating comments look like he’s providing aid and comfort to the enemy. To those, like me, who came here through Wilson, we tend to give him the benefit of the doubt – not his words themselves but in considering how much he gives away.

But I said enough on the earlier post that I’ll mostly sit and watch here.

It’s a mark of grace to appreciate the rightful contributions of others, while overlooking their faults. No human being has the truth totally clinched and in the bag. We’re all trying to get closer to it, and every little bit helps. Take it for what it’s worth and move on to the next lesson.

The test of Wilson and other Tradcons is not what they write. It is their response to criticism. When they get clued in about feminism, female nature, the role of women in Scripture and the state of the divorce courts, do they verify and act upon the truth or do they double and quadruple down on the white knighting? The latter proves evil.

It’s a mark of grace to appreciate the rightful contributions of others, while overlooking their faults. No human being has the truth totally clinched and in the bag. We’re all trying to get closer to it, and every little bit helps. Take it for what it’s worth and move on to the next lesson.

Wilson has been a help to me. If nothing else, he showed me that the entirety of Christendom had not completely abandoned husbands.

He gave me hope that there were/are still leaders telling the church than men are given Scriptural authority and that they are unfairly diminished and relegated to all-manner of lesser-than servants whose primary job is to keep their wives happy.

He may not say it perfectly, but what he has said was very beneficial. I am glad to have discovered this blog as well, but I cannot deny the contributions Wilson made for me personally.

Hmm said: “To those who come to the red pill through a hard fall, his moderating comments look like he’s providing aid and comfort to the enemy.”

An interesting perspective which seems to have a lot of truth in it. Perception is important. For example, I have seen many Christian women claim that preachers talk about wives submitting far more than they ever talk about the commands to husbands. I am incredulous because I would say that preachers almost never talk about wives submitting to their husbands. I wish there were a way (perhaps Watson?) to analyze every sermon made in the last decade to how often each of these happen.

In my case, I believe I was blue pill through churchian indoctrination, but am now red pill following my frivorce. Nonetheless, I do not see Wilson, for example, to be pandering to women or feminism to any significant extent. I will keep my eyes open going forward.

It’s a mark of grace to appreciate the rightful contributions of others, while overlooking their faults.

Except that this fault of Wilson’s is an obvious intentional one. We saw that with his latest article on masculinity (Masculinity without Permission). He can see the havoc wreaked by his own teachings of servant leadership- he’s not ignorant. But that won’t stop him from obfuscating like he usually does. He knows he must denounce servant leadership, but doing so would require repenting of preaching the very doctrine that has led to this famine of masculinity in the Christian church. So instead, he writes an article to appear as though he denounces it, all the while making sure to include legal terms that absolve him of truly doing so, I.E. placing the blame at the feet of a false definition of servant-leadership, rather than a true one.

This is not accidental. This is purposeful, and it angers me. It angers me because as long as he obfuscates, readers sympathetic to him will seize upon those vague, seemingly inconsistent statements and go Aha! See, he wasn’t being clear in what he said, so now you MUST give him the benefit of the doubt!

Do they ever suspect that they are being manipulated? I don’t think they do. I think they genuinely don’t catch on that there’s a reason Douglas Wilson can’t simply be direct when he writes. Compare any average article by Wilson and compare it to James White or Steve Hays. There’s no comparison. Those other two men are clear and specific and direct about what they believe and what they denounce. The only reason not to be is if you wish to hide what you believe from your audience.

Ah, but then, anytime you make that insinuation, then there’s a problem with you. How dare you assume that this obvious pattern of behavior is indicative of a problem on his part! Don’t you know it’s uncharitable to assume the worst of a Christian brother!

This is what happens when you do what Wilson does. Hard to overlook that glaring purposeful fault.

“In the meantime, my original 21 theses had apparently been responded to here, which I just now read in the writing of this post, and I am afraid my response to the corporal punishment aficionados was taken as an assertion on my part that any disagreement with me from my right must be coming from wife beaters. Such poisoning the well would be a bad thing, and so for any readers who were disappointed in what they considered charitably to be uncharacteristic squid ink, please know that I did not do this thing.”

I gathered this from your post, and considered writing a correction in the comments of Dalrock’s post, but I chose not too because it was more trouble that it is worth. First, I would have had to straighten out what you made crooked (more of a swirl, really), then I would have had to explain why I still disagreed. Better to just let it alone.

“This point could easily be misrepresented, so I will have to ask my critics to refrain until I get to a fuller treatment of [headship].”

How many posts on the headship of the husband do you need to write to approach a full treatment? There are a dozen here already. How did it come to be that you have yet to write something in fullness?

From this side of the screen, here are two bits of advice:

1) Say plainly that to be in submission means to be obedient. There are hard cases that come along. Those hard cases aren’t fit for general instruction. That makes them poor topics for a public teaching blog; the nature of which is speaking of generalities, to a general public.

2) Don’t talk around the subject of marital roles until you have spoken plainly on the roles. This post is a good example of the wrong way to do it. So is the Wife Beaters post. In both you point to your left and *imply* those people are bad, then point to your right and *imply* those people are bad, too. Then you talk about what you didn’t mean, and what they shouldn’t mean, and what does it mean if we reflect on this string of words over here… You generally fail to make a definitive statement. Altogether the tactics and deflections are supposed to imply that whatever remains is correct, at the sensible center; because you’re Sensible Centrist Doug. But we don’t need to know if Wilson is sensibly centrist, or even if he is ever confused with bad people. We need to know if Wilson is correct. Be actually bold on the topic for a change. Don’t waste time and effort differentiating yourself from “those Bad people over there”.

3) This will really help you: When writing about women, resist the urge to talk about men screwing up. That is a different topic. This is a great temptation for men. He believes it will give him a sense of integrity and humility, and thereby save him some grief from women because they will see him as unbiased. It won’t, and they won’t. It will just encourage women to tell themselves that they are primarily victims of men’s sin rather than the owners of sinful hearts who do sin all on their own. Some days you might want to talk about men’s failings. By all means: Fire away on those days. But on days you write on women’s temptations to sin, do not pollute it with irrelevant comments about how men sin too, dontchaknow.
______________________________________________________________________

My comment drew zero replies from Wilson. Meanwhile, he responded to InsanityBites2 on almost daily basis. I believe that is because she, being a harpy, gave him an excuse to talk about how weak and evil other men are.

As we now know, Wilson decided to shut down the comments. So I additionally believe that he stopped comments because while he could see that allowing people like IB2 to comment was counterproductive, he couldn’t bring himself to just boot a (supposed) woman. Plus, she seemed to be rousing all these leading “lording” misogynists in the comments. We all had to go.

1) Wilson is good at writing in the sense that he has an excellent vocabulary. He does use it to obscure, at times. When he had a comment section on not-just Tuesday, he was called out for it. He’s in his 60s and even if he wanted to change, old habits die hard.
2) I read Cane’s comment at the time. It was outstanding. Cane is also right, Doug tended to respond to regulars only, and had too much of a soft spot for female commenters.
3) Wilson does need to take accountability for servant-leadership ending us up here where we are now. He says he longs for a better day. Sure, the 1970s and 80s were better than today. But if he doesn’t see the errors of those decades which led us here, then it will not do well to pine for those days.
4) The best defense of Wilson is the truth. He has his flaws, but he is not nearly the worst among evangelical-types. He is a non-conformist freak compared to some of them.

“As we now know, Wilson decided to shut down the comments. So I additionally believe that he stopped comments because while he could see that allowing people like IB2 to comment was counterproductive, he couldn’t bring himself to just boot a (supposed) woman. Plus, she seemed to be rousing all these leading “lording” misogynists in the comments. We all had to go.”

I think you’re wrong on a couple of counts. Wilson does still allow comments, but only on a Tuesday “mailbag” post and a Thursday “content cluster muster” post, and both only for a limited time (two days or so).

Secondly, I am fairly certain that Wilson banned IB from commenting a few weeks or so before he changed the commenting situation. I cannot prove he banned her as I do not believe he ever stated he did, but, if he didn’t ban her, I suspect she would still be commenting in the allotted commenting opportunities.

Lastly, I have the perception that Wilson seldom has responded to comments with a “comment” of his own. In other words, I don’t find it surprising that he did not respond to your comment, although I would have liked for him to have done so. Now I know he occasionally responded to IB’s comments , but I don’t think it was “almost daily” although it would be difficult to prove.

“wish there were a way (perhaps Watson?) to analyze every sermon made in the last decade to how often each of these happen.”

I would offer a simpler way to test a church where a woman makes the claim that the church pushes female submission. Merely go to the church on Mother’s day and Father’s day, record the sermons and compare in each the negative and positive things said about each gender.

If it is all positive about mothers and women and all negative about men and fathers, than the church is apostate. No need to go further, and the women are obfuscating.

This is the typical “what about me” or “it happens to women too” female argument to attempt to undermine anyone pointing out that something is wrong

I would happily wager money on which way this will go.

As for the rest, I think the legal system has the best way of looking at writings: You look at the plain language for its meaning. Only if the plain language is unclear, do you start looking at “intentions”

There is no point in defending the indefensible.
The factors that demonstrate the brokenness of Western Culture – the dysfunctional nature of man-woman relationships, matriarchy,’single motherhood,
carousel-riding (it’s called,”focussing on my career, so I don’t have time for a relationship “) are all as evident in the church as they are in Western secular culture.
The toxic stew given to Christian men – “servant leadership”, is used everywhere and they are unawares,so much that if you tell them this is feminism, they will tell you that “Patriarchy was a resulting the fall “!
With the pastorship of the Western Church enthralled by such feminist
cuckholdry, the alternative isn’t to walk away, but rather to form the Christian equivalent of popular nationalism – the “Alt Christian” mindset.
Those of us here did not leave the faith. The Faith left us, betraying us by sleight of hand exactly as the political system has.
It is too late for the clergy to explain away with hand-wringing that they were mislead or misunderstood. Theirnteachings have been weighed against Gods Word and with it all of the sordid outcomes of Feminism. They’ve been found wanting.

“Bond came to the conclusion that Tilly Masterson was one of those girls whose hormones had got mixed-up. He knew the type well and thought they and their male counterparts were a direct consequence of giving votes to women and “sex equality.” As a result of fifty years of emancipation, feminine qualities were dying out or being transferred to the males. Pansies of both sexes were everywhere, not yet completely homosexual, but confused, not knowing what they were. The result was a herd of unhappy sexual misfits – barren and full of frustrations, the women wanting to dominate and the men to be nannied. He was sorry for them, but he had no time for them.”

The novel was published in 1959. You couldn’t get this stuff published today.

I’ve been ripped here before so I don’t mind having it done again. Once again I will state it is really easy to sit on the sidelines, not be down in the trenches and arm chair quarterback.

I love Dalrock, but he offers no concrete specific advice for husbands or wives here daily, weekly, monthly or yearly. He does not counsel. He does not have to apply to nitty gritty details of scripture and leading fallen human beings to anyone other than his own family. Dalrock has one purpose, to expose the feminism everywhere and especially in Christianity. When you have more than one mandate it makes your job thousands of times more difficult and that is the road Doug Wilson walks. When you are called to bring the Word of God to life, rubber meets the road to people walking through the mud of life it is not as simple as Dalrock points out. My second problem is doing this publicly to someone who is on your team. Men like Wilson have it coming at them from every angle, and apparently from those who should have his six also- because if you can realize not everything at every moment can be interpreted through feminism- he has had men’s more than any known pastor other than probably Voddie Bachum that I am familar with. He has faced down attacks in every form and fashion and still stands for the truth of Christ.

I will judge Doug Wilson by what his church is like, what the men, women and family’s are like and who is enemies are. There is not a feminist group out there that has not attacked Doug Wilson. His church, by most accounts in incredibly healthy and biblical. If he’s guilty of anything it is over explaining because we are surrounded by idiots and he’s trying to make sure idiots don’t misunderstand, not that they won’t anyway.

In National Geographic’s April issue, Goldberg, who identified herself as National Geographic’s first woman and first Jewish editor, wrote a letter titled “For Decades, Our Coverage Was Racist. To Rise Above Our Past, We Must Acknowledge It.”

“I knew when we looked back there would be some storytelling that we obviously would never do today, that we don’t do and we’re not proud of,” she told AP. “But it seemed to me if we want to credibly talk about race, we better look and see how we talked about race.” …

“The coverage wasn’t right before because it was told from an elite, white American point of view, and I think it speaks to exactly why we needed a diversity of storytellers,” Goldberg said. “So we need photographers who are African-American and Native American because they are going to capture a different truth and maybe a more accurate story.”

I’m probably the only commenter here who’s met Pastor Doug. I don’t claim to be a personal friend. I attended a Bible study he led on marriage while I worked on my undergrad degree at Washington State University, which is only seven miles from Moscow, Idaho (where Pastor Doug’s church and school are located).

Here’s my assessment of Pastor Doug based on first hand experience, the testimony of Christians I know and trust who attend (or attended) his church (and/or school), and from reading a couple of his books, and many of his blog articles.

Pastor Doug is a good man, husband, father, pastor, and brother in Christ who (like all of us) has blind spots. The blind spot that Dalrock points out happens to be very common among Christian men, especially those of Pastor Doug’s age.

By definition, none of us can see our own blind spot. We need Christian brothers to point it out to us, and we need to be thick skinned when they do. After all, “faithful are the wounds of a friend” (Prov 27:6). Frankly, Dalrock is doing Pastor Doug a favor by pointing out his blind spot to him. In fact, it seems to be getting smaller, and I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Dalrock’s criticisms have something to do with that. Certainly, men on this blog (specifically Dalrock, Cane, Scott and a few others) have pointed out my blind spots, and have been instrumental in changing the way I think about relevant subjects, and I’m grateful to them for the challenge.

Were I to move my family to Moscow, ID, or Pullman, WA, I’d take my family to Pastor Doug’s church happily and without reservation. These days, that’s saying a lot.

The blind spot that Dalrock points out happens to be very common among Christian men, especially those of Pastor Doug’s age.

I’ve been that man and have changed my perspective. I know many others and have spoken with them about the very things that get aired out here. Some (few) of them are modifying their previously held notions. Some (more) of them are going to die in the saddle, and will not change their minds about feminism. They think they are keeping it at bay. “Sugar and spice and everything nice” dontcha know?

the thing is more men who think there is something wrong with feminism like Wilson
are feminists themselves
even ” The Art of Manliness” encourages men to be domestic, support their wife’s careers and even praise house husbands for humbly serving their wives

If the end result of these supposed anti feminists is exactly was Sheryl Sandberg wants
men serving women and helping them achieve their dreams ( call it whatever, leading/sacrifice/manly- wearing a skirt is now manly…)

then they are not believers
the bible never calls for such stupid arrangements

The obfuscated writing style is common amoung those who favor the sort of long drawn out pretzel logic required to make not A mean A, those who wish to be seen as favorable to both sides of an argument, those who need convince you of things contrary to the plain language of scripture or who play games with definitions.

It is no coincidence here that Wilson is Reformed.

Or that people seem to be defending the rediculous here, Wilson has a long and dedicated following amoung those who perceive themselves as more enlightened.

Oh and on the rubber meats the road, it’s complicated comment, BS. Truth is truth. Complicated situations just mean it is all the more imperrative to be clear in the foundational truth.

To those of you arguing the “but he’s a nice guy, he’s just confused” case — does he give other men the benefit of the doubt you want everyone to give him? Has he not made vicious allegations of sin against practically all men, whom he knows nothing of? Has he not provided cover for other men’s wives to disrespect them and engage in sinful behavior?

You would apply a far more generous standard to him than he has to other men. When he writes the following:

“Now before getting into what we see, I wanted qualify something first. I want you to know and understand that nothing said here would apply to a woman who was married to a genuine tyrant. I have often wished that more women would be willing to be Abigails in dealing with their Nabals, and those situations are scarcely rare. I know that there are marriages where the husbands are thugs and bullies, and that their wives need to learn how to bring things to a head. I know of such situations at first hand. When that happens, and it happens too often, I am firmly in the corner of the wife who is the victim. Many women need to learn to be an Abigail.”

He is insulting other men and encouraging their wives to disrespect and disobey them, that is, to sin against them. Every woman who wants to disobey her husband will easily see him as Nabal and herself as Abigail, and he presents absolutely nothing to stop that from happening, nor does he present any evidence that the situation with Nabal and Abigail in any way encourages women to “bring things to a head.” This is simply false, as anyone who simply read the story would know — her role is to smooth things over and be a good hostess, not to confront her husband.

Even when he claims to be on the husband’s side after the above passage, he repeatedly states that her husband is failing and is afraid. And this from one letter/email from only the wife’s perspective! He sure doesn’t hesitate to say that other men have failed, or that they’re filled with fear. Dalrock has clearly demonstrated his failure to teach the truth and fear of upsetting women; he has been kinder to Wilson than Wilson was to other men he knew nothing about.

He is a supposed pastor who teaches women to sin against God and against their husbands. He is unworthy of the defenses people constantly post on his behalf.

I knew Doug Wilson personally, for many years. I love him as a brother in Christ, but I have not liked him for many years.

I met Doug in the early 1980 soon after I had become a christian in the military. Doug is an ex Navy man who served on subs during the cold war. He led a scruffy and well grounded bible church in Moscow, Idaho that met on Sundays in a auto-body shop. On Sundays I would help other men push out the cars and sweep the floors and set up chairs. I was drawn to Doug’s preaching from the Scripture. He with authority from the word, and was not pretentious. He was educated and articulate yet down to earth. In those years, most folks attended, including Doug and the elders, wearing jeans, flannel shirts, etc. There was good expository teaching in those days and good hymns sung. He and the elders were a real spiritual blessing to the little flock of 75 – 100 saints.

I regularly attended Doug’s Wednesday night bible studies held in his small home. I ate it up. He was very good at explaining scriptural principles. Again good expository teaching and good exegetics. I am forever grateful to Doug for his repeated admonishment to not read commentary, but read the Bible. When finished, read it again, then again, and again. I took it to heart like nothing I ever had. I read the scriptures, then again, and again.

I met a young woman at that fellowship whom I had known at Moscow High School. We discussed marriage and the scriptural roles of men, women, husbands and wives. She agreed with these truths, i.e. the husband/father is the head of the relationship/family, the wife/mother is to submit to him. We received pre-marital counseling from Doug. We had him marry us. We embarked on our life together as one flesh, through rich or poor, sickness or health, until death should part us…

Early on a situation developed in our marriage where her mother became terminally ill. My wife was in graduate school where she had, prior to our marriage, signed a contract to complete certain research. We met with Dough and his wife (his wife only as hostess and friend to my wife) to find an answer to the question of whether or not it was moral to nullify the contract so that my wife could attend to her dying, mute, paralyzed mother in her last months of life. Doug said no, my wife should continue in school, so that in the future, if I should die or become disabled she could earn better money. I politely disagreed and pointed out Numbers 30:13 stating that a husband may void her vow once the vow is brought to his attention, as it was with me at that time. I had done what Doug had taught – read the word, and again, read the word. Doug stood up and left the room leaving the two of us alone with his wife. We left and I voided my wife’s contract. She cared for her mother.

We attended Doug’s church while I finished my degree, but I became unhappy with what became more and more heavy handed teaching. Make no mistake, Doug is a very charismatic speaker, using many cute, witty expressions and anecdotes, through which he garners a large, enthusiasic following. But I tired of this because I saw it as pandering.

Not too long into our marriage it became clear that my wife was a dyed-in-the-wool feminist. She came out of the closet, so to speak, with regard to many a shocking thing which cannot be mentioned. She was extremely contentious and fought endlessly (ultimately for thirty years) to have authority in the relationship and home using all sorts of sneaky tactics as well as passive-aggressive maneuvers. I would not yield. I had no idea what blue-pill or red-pill was, but because I held to sola scriptura, which resulted in me being red-pill. I was not the perfect husband for father, but I was a good one. I read the entire scripture to my wife and children, all seven, and instructed them at home, one the road to Walmart, at every turn. But I was not respected. She secretly poisoned half my children against me. I sensed for a long time that she wanted a divorce, but despite the fact that being married to her was like being in a three-legged race with a corpse, I would nonetheless die honoring my vow to the Lord.

I never spoke to outsiders about my relationship with my wife, or our family life. There was no abuse. We home-schooled all our children. I earned a six-figure income as a software engineer. But there was this constant rebellion, war of authority between me and my wife. I started hearing rumors fed back to me, about me, from all sorts of people, local and far away. Friends, family, church acquaintances, pastors, even people I never met had “dirt” on me. My wife had carefully carried out a smear campaign on me.

I was utterly despised by her. Unbeknownst to me, over all the years of our marriage she had been in regular email and phone contact with the Wilsons, Doug, his brother, Evan, their father, Jim, and their wives, where she reported falsehoods about me and played the tragedy queen. She wasn’t haaaaaaaaaaapy, and literally coveted my God given authority over her and the family. She worked hard over the years to undermine me and divide our family so that today our children are separated from me and one from another. She nuked us. I had a heart attack and open heart surgery two weeks before our divorce hearing. In court my lawyer exposed her hugely falsifying her financial statements. The judge chose to ignore her lies. I was divorce raped.

What stings is that the Wilsons and the larger Churcian Church allowed a tattle-tale wife to spread falsehoods about our relationship yet never once contacted me to discuss any of it. She got the green light to divorce based upon her tales alone. They taught and encouraged her in christo-feminism. I had on three occasions appealed to different pastors and elders over the years, but I rebuffed and blamed for her sinfulness. I was ignorant about the take-over of the church by the feminists and white-knights, like Doug. I truly expected that these Christian leaders were reading the scripture, like I was, and understanding what it teaches. I expected them to back me up against my wife, enforce church discipline if necessary. I was so naive. No one had my back. I was isolated and destroyed, physically, emotionally and financially. Those men, those Christian leaders could have prevented the destruction of me, my wife and our family, but I consider them culpable for its death.

I eventually became formally red-pill thanks to Rollo Tomassi, Dalrock, Vox Day, and others. Today I’m especially thankful to Dalrock for calling out Doug more than once on his harmful duplicity and unbiblical teachings. I am a very humble man in speech and word and could never challenge Doug myself. There is great need among the brothers that these bad leaders be skillfully, biblically rebuked.

Again, thank you Dalrock. It helps to heal my wounded heart to see you so righteously take them to task.

I pray that Doug, his brother Evan, and his Father Jim, my brothers in Christ, would repent.

“Over all the years of our marriage she had been in regular email and phone contact with the Wilsons, Doug, his brother, Evan, their father, Jim, and their wives, where she reported falsehoods about me and played the tragedy queen. She wasn’t haaaaaaaaaaapy,”

Very telling…

“Friends, family, church acquaintances, pastors, even people I never met had “dirt” on me.”

No surprise, its the same thing CPS does when they kidnap children from their parents, dig up dirt on decent people by the morally bankrupt hypocrites of the government.

Idaho doesn’t sound all “CONservative” as people from there think it is. Sorry had to throw that in there after several observations of the natives.

I’m struck by several comments here, especially Robert, Gary Eden, and SaltMark whose thoughts appear to be at odds with each other.

However, it is exactly this kind of debate, around a specific person (usually the pastor of a big regional church or a guru of some kind writing about mens topics) that has drawn my attention away from these sources and on to Orthodoxy.

Oscar and I once had a long conversation in which he said he was growing tired of this phenomenon also. That is, any particular faith group or church tends to be only as big and growing and dynamic as their main pastor is charismatic. There is much to be gleaned about the relationship between Truth, leaders, followers, etc by simply exploring that issue alone.

On the one hand, Robert is right. There is not enough rubber on the road here at this site–for those who are seeking it– and that doesn’t mean Dalrock isn’t doing great good here. But what Robert appears to be saying is “you take pot shots from the crowd, and then don’t offer any real advice to men.” I understand that reaction. Men are looking for a leader to follow. That’s what we do.

On the other hand, SaltMark has had a negative personal experience with Pastor Wilson and it is painful to read. There was a bad outcome that might not be mended ever, in this lifetime.

Cane writes in a previous post on his blog that “you are probably alone” and this is true as well. I have no idea how “masculine” I am because I am truly the guy Dalrock describes as “are you going to use that or are you going to make dinner?” I have no friends like that in real life. Zero.

This doesn’t mean I am bitter and lonely or that I don’t love my wife, my friends, etc. It is just a resignation I have made.

The best I have been able to find is a church where the clergy are required to dispense Truth if you ask. This is how Mychael and I stopped using BC, for example. Everyone in our church uses it. But we went to our priest and asked if we could start it to give Mychael a break and he said “if you ask me, I will say no. Because there are no exceptions to the rule.” And so we stopped. (And had another baby).

He says the same thing about a lot of other uncomfortable Truths (even ones about husbands and hierarchy). Sometimes you can see his own squirming as he says “well, I am supposed to say this,” which is at least honest of him and so we go home and try it.

I guess my point is, I would advise Christian men who have come to this place–this place of having “swallowed the red pill” to consider the following. All of these writers and individual church leaders have risen to positions of popularity under a complex set of variables. Some noble and some not so much. But eventually they will let you down.

Dig in with your families (if you detect that your wife won’t blow up your marriage) and find a place where you can live this out without too much attention on you. When the attention DOES come, present your marriage, your way of life as the glowing, loving alternative to the world. This has happened to us through the American Dad and Ljubomir Farms (to some extent) site with our close, immediate circle so many times I cannot count. (And in ways I could not have predicted).

Gary Eden writes about how sophistry and obfuscation are tools used by those who either don’t know what they are talking about or are deliberately trying to hide something. I have had this same discussion with friends –many of them church “leaders” also. I say “if it takes you 50 paragraphs to come up with a rubric that explains how EPH 5:21 negates everything else the scripture says about husbands and wives, I am going to have a hard time listening.”

A husband with an IQ of 80 should be able to understand how to relate to his wife. Otherwise, marriage is only for sophists and theologians.

I think we are far past the point of giving those that say things undermining men in the home the benefit of the doubt. It is crystal clear what they intend. They’ve done it in every other civilized country in the world. They are taking men out of the homes, dumping women on the streets to be used and abused by any random stranger by choice or otherwise, and calling anyone that opposes such behavior racist and misogyinist. Decency is being bred out of society. Those that consort with, endorse, or echo such philosophies deserve much worse than to be called out.

I am forever grateful to Doug for his repeated admonishment to not read commentary, but read the Bible. When finished, read it again, then again, and again. I took it to heart like nothing I ever had. I read the scriptures, then again, and again.

I guess “that was then, this is now.”

It would appear that at some point Dougie became popular enough that he no longer needed to rely on Scripture and instead could just start quoting liberally from the Gospel of Saint Douglas, knowing that no one would object, or even be aware of it at all. I strongly suspect that this eventually happens to most, if not very neary all pastors who accumulste large followings.

By the way, brother, my condolences and prayers on what happened to your marriage. We truly are ALL at risk of this.

I am forever grateful to Doug for his repeated admonishment to not read commentary, but read the Bible. When finished, read it again, then again, and again. I took it to heart like nothing I ever had. I read the scriptures, then again, and again.

That is a bogus claim. You shouldn’t read Doug Wilson in that case either, nor anything other than the Scriptures, ever.

Never listen to a teacher or pastor either, since only the Scriptures can teach you! It is the cult of the personal, thinking we can all know everything.

I am as much Sola Scriptura as anyone, but we need to learn from others as well. That is the way God setup the world!

An interesting perspective which seems to have a lot of truth in it. Perception is important. For example, I have seen many Christian women claim that preachers talk about wives submitting far more than they ever talk about the commands to husbands. I am incredulous because I would say that preachers almost never talk about wives submitting to their husbands. I wish there were a way (perhaps Watson?) to analyze every sermon made in the last decade to how often each of these happen.

I would completely agree. I listen to a fair bit of preaching and I hear far more about how the submission message is overpreached than I hear otherwise. I can’t recall a single sermon recently I have heard that focused on women submitting at all.

Kind of like those who proclaim mutual submission and then only focus on how men need to submit. It is all a facade to push female worship into Christianity.

Thanks for sharing your story, and I am sorry for what you’ve endured.

Much of what you wrote is familiar to me, so it is encouraging to know that it’s not just been me to see and experience these things.

RC Sproul, RC Sproul Jr and some others have said that if a pastor hears a wife complain, that his first response should be to send her back to her husband. He should not foster her discontenment and rebellion with a “sympathetic ear”.

Female rebellion is not new, it traces back to Eve. The Bible is clear on the roles of husband and wife, in no small part so Christian families can withstand the fiery darts associated with this rebellion. We are not in some modern age where these Biblical principles no longer apply. Yet, that has been the Churchian message for the past 150 years, and it has consumed major denominations, and is currently tearing thru “conservative” low churches, including Reformed.

In my case, I believe I was blue pill through churchian indoctrination, but am now red pill following my frivorce. Nonetheless, I do not see Wilson, for example, to be pandering to women or feminism to any significant extent. I will keep my eyes open going forward.

This is a much better focus than your later whining. My own frivorce of an almost 30 year marriage hit me like a ton of bricks too, though I was fairly red pill by that point. I bump heads with others here at times. We could avoid that if everyone would just acknowledge that I am always right, but I am not holding my breath waiting for that.

I say my bit, perhaps arguing a bit too much at times, then I let it go. I personally get the “last word” in on some threads due to how I participate, since I am not always present here, catching things after they have wound down.

I don’t care if anyone here agrees with me or not. Just being able to talk some is good at times and this is a decent format overall. Please keep that in mind if you ever participate more in here.

I know what it’s like here (I think I’ve been around a lot longer than you have). Mostly I needed a short break. I get tired of banging my head against a brick wall. I see that a few have since made comments that I perceive to have similar viewpoints to mine. Perhaps my whining was a motivator.

3) Wilson does need to take accountability for servant-leadership ending us up here where we are now. He says he longs for a better day. Sure, the 1970s and 80s were better than today. But if he doesn’t see the errors of those decades which led us here, then it will not do well to pine for those days.

Those days led to these days, and would do so again if we could magically beam back there. The minds of many were poisoned in those times, leading even churches to the mess we have today. Stop idealizing the past!

Focus on what the Word says and let that govern our lives, not the ways of man (and woman)!

Ras al Ghul,

As for the rest, I think the legal system has the best way of looking at writings: You look at the plain language for its meaning. Only if the plain language is unclear, do you start looking at “intentions”

Unless you are a member of the US Supreme Court. Then you make up things on a regular basis. A most recent example is the time a tax was found in an item that specifically claimed to not be a tax (see Obamacare).

Robert,

When you have more than one mandate it makes your job thousands of times more difficult and that is the road Doug Wilson walks.

I will agree that sites like Dalrock’s and Vox Day’s (who I also read regularly) do spend more time on problems than solutions, I can’t say someone like Doug Wilson is a full ally. He wouldn’t contain the continuous digs against “toxic masculinity” if that were so. He feels the need to shoot a bit at “his own side” even when confronting the far more prevalent problems. That shows someone who is misguided at best. He needs to focus more on the rebellion and twisting of the Scriptures than on the edge cases that distract from what is happening most of the time.

Can you imagine him making a post where he talked about the need to take God’s Word seriously, but peppered it with comments about not taking it too literally? Would that make him proper or a compromiser?

Oscar,

Were I to move my family to Moscow, ID, or Pullman, WA, I’d take my family to Pastor Doug’s church happily and without reservation. These days, that’s saying a lot.

That unfortunately just shows how far most churches in the US have fallen from what they could and should be. I have given up most efforts to try and convince others of truths. Even the men’s group I go to now really doesn’t want to discuss issues. They just want to have short time with each other, pat each other on the back, and then go home to their own lives.

We have little ways to really challenge each other on the Scriptures. We can’t correct ourselves since no one is willing to do the needed arguing about what is right and should be followed, however much they claim to do that!

why so 21 century Christians keep needing more and more books and explanations for basic principles?!!!
it is because they secretly want to justify their sinful worldly lives

Most Christians don’t want to learn much of anything, beyond a few platitudes. You miss the point. Most Christians don’t read anything and reading is not bad in and of itself. More reading would be better, especially if it got Christians to better apply their faith to be faithful to the Scriptures in their lives.

Eidolon,

You are correct. Wilson and those like him would have given my wife spiritual cover in our divorce because they would hold me accountable for a great many things, only a few of which would be true. My strong will would be chief and would cause them to dismiss any serious challenge of her decision to rebel against God and pursue the single life again so she can go her own ways. That is one of the serious flaws of many today. Question it and you will be told you are defending yourself, instead of having people seriously evaluate their foolish thoughts that they are doing what is right, even supporting Scriptural principles.

SaltMark,

She wasn’t haaaaaaaaaaapy

You committed the worst possible sin in their eyes: You allowed your wife to be unhappy. It never crossed their minds that she could have made herself that way, it must have been your fault!

I have been there, got the t-shirt, etc. Even male led churches fail to challenge the foolishness bound up in the heart of many modern Christian women. They are far more feminist than most realize, yet they are not confronted.

Sorry to hear of your status. Sounds similar to mind in some ways (not in others). The undermining is allowed to go on far too much and that is one of the major beefs against someone like Doug Wilson who fails to acknowledge it and does things to even promote it, whether he outwardly acknowledges it or not.

I would consider with your mother-in-law that she should have moved nearer to you so your wife could have cared for her more without breaking her commitments as well. Many fail to think through things like that, thinking that the only choice is breaking a contract. Ironically it sounds like your wife was quite good at breaking contracts that really mattered, notably the one she made with you.

RC Sproul, RC Sproul Jr and some others have said that if a pastor hears a wife complain, that his first response should be to send her back to her husband. He should not foster her discontenment and rebellion with a “sympathetic ear”.

That would be good. I haven’t listened to him a lot lately, but I don’t recall hearing that when I got to listen to his sermons more often. I wouldn’t agree with his Calvanism, but his points about female nature would be accurate if true. I would that more would take stances like that!

OKR,

I’ve been around a lot longer than you have

Perhaps….

I am thankful for those who are commenting here with grace toward Wilson, rather than the hostility that is being displayed by others.

At least a few may be motivated by the idea that comments like Wilson’s directly caused their own pain. I know his ideas are very similar to those of the church that gave spiritual cover to my exwife as she nuked our marriage and they failed to support me in the slightest during the hardest time of my life.

That may make me less charitable toward those like Wilson, but it is based on reality. We will only change things by standing firmly for the truth, not always giving disclaimers. Those who teach are held to a higher standard as well, per the Scriptures.

Dalrock said: “Moreover, if Wilson happens to be writing the opposite of what he intends, pointing out the logical flaws is doing Wilson a great service, as it offers him the opportunity to write a correction.”

I expect Wilson’s post today will be open for comments. I hope that he responds to Hmm’s letter. Even if he doesn’t, all of you have the opportunity to comment about Wilson’s post “Masculinity without Permission”.

Dalrock,

I especially think you should go there and comment since you consider his post to be wrong, at least in part. I would suppose Wilson would see your perspective and it would give him the opportunity to change his ways. It would also expose the readers there to your viewpoint. Perhaps they would even come to your blog and others’ blogs and be enlightened.

I especially think you should go there and comment since you consider his post to be wrong, at least in part. I would suppose Wilson would see your perspective and it would give him the opportunity to change his ways. It would also expose the readers there to your viewpoint. Perhaps they would even come to your blog and others’ blogs and be enlightened.

Dalrock has been quite open and left the comments open for as long as I can remember. Wilson can come and explain his point of view here if he likes. My guess is he doesn’t like that much – no ability to control the conversation. People saying things he doesn’t like, mean, naughty words and such, not enough decorum for Wilson.. he’s all about them platitudes and niceties after all.

Wilson bans those he doesn’t agree with, those he scorns. He doesn’t allow real open debates. Hence his likeness for ‘Tuesday Mailbag’ or ‘Thursday Content Cluster Muster’ bullshite.

I am thankful for those who are commenting here with grace toward Wilson, rather than the hostility that is being displayed by others.

Aw shucks! You don’t like mean words either. I feel for you, I really do. Yet, up stream, Wilson and others destroyed a man’s family and crickets from you. Better to speak with a forked tongue, eh? Wilson can speak for himself, let him do so, the open criticism will do him good.

BillyS-
I know. That was my point in saying that. Repeating the 70s and 80s will lead to today every time, unless something changes. Wilson needs to learn what mistakes led to today, and change his beliefs on those issues.

“RC Sproul, RC Sproul Jr and some others have said that if a pastor hears a wife complain, that his first response should be to send her back to her husband. He should not foster her discontenment and rebellion with a “sympathetic ear”.

I didn’t know that, but maybe RC Sr. (RIP) said those kind of things 30 years ago. He was a major figure in the Reformed world (much bigger than Wilson) and would get ripped apart for saying that today.

Sproul Jr. is more on the fringe (like Wilson, he’s considered a radical patriarch in mainstream Reformed/Evangelical circles). Maybe he still says those kind of things. Unfortunately, he’s done some things to legitimately hurt his reputation*. I don’t think many (any?) people follow him these days.

* Defrocking from church office, Ashley Madison visit, drunk driving charge. These are things a “progressive” Christian leader or Democrat politician could get away with, but not someone in conservative, Bible-believing circles.

How is that different from Dalrock? I know Wilson has banned some. So has Dalrock! I have seen both of them ban commenters and, in all cases where I know the circumstances, I am glad they did. I am reasonably certain that InsanityBytes is one they have both banned. Have you been banned at Wilson’s blog? Do you know of others who have? If so, I’d like to know who.

“Dalrock has been quite open and left the comments open for as long as I can remember. Wilson can come and explain his point of view here if he likes. My guess is he doesn’t like that much – no ability to control the conversation.”

As I have stated elsewhere, Wilson does still allow comments but only on a limited basis. So Dalrock can certainly comment there if he wishes.

Continuing to address your argument, until the recent change Wilson did have comments open on all posts since at least January 2014. If Dalrock and others wished, they have been able to comment during those four years or so. I know a few did. Did Dalrock? One could also easily suggest that Dalrock “doesn’t like that much”.

You imply that Wilson is only willing to play on his own turf. I have no evidence that Dalrock is any different! If he does comment elsewhere, I think it is rare and I do not think I have seen it. Why would Wilson comment at Dalrock if he has no complaint about him? I do not remember Wilson ever complaining about Dalrock on his own blog, but I have certainly seen the opposite.

Most importantly, regarding your implication that Wilson is less of a man than Dalrock in their blogging approaches, it is my opinion that a man who disagrees should go to the one he disagrees with. In other words, Dalrock and others should go directly to Wilson with disagreements. I see failure to do so as a lack of courage. If you have disagreement with Wilson, I believe you will have opportunity today to take it directly to him.

“I will agree that sites like Dalrock’s and Vox Day’s (who I also read regularly) do spend more time on problems than solutions”

Also, when you write under your real name and lead a church/ministry/school/etc, the stakes get MUCH higher. I’m not defending Wilson from all charges here. I think he should write more clearly (like the Baylys do at their blog). I also think he should’ve kicked MeMe/InsanityBytes off his blog long, long ago. But when he says something controversial, he faces more serious consequences than most of us do.

“Yet, up stream, Wilson and others destroyed a man’s family and crickets from you. Better to speak with a forked tongue, eh?”

I am sorry for SaltMark’s situation. I’d really like him to provide his account to Wilson on his blog and see if Wilson would address it.

Speaking of forked tongues, I believe your statement is an argument from silence. I have stated here that I am frivorced (my story has many similarities to SaltMark but I did not provide it in that kind of detail). Did you give me more than crickets? I don’t think so. Your point is discounted accordingly.

…it is my opinion that a man who disagrees should go to the one he disagrees with. In other words, Dalrock and others should go directly to Wilson with disagreements. I see failure to do so as a lack of courage. If you have disagreement with Wilson, I believe you will have opportunity today to take it directly to him.

Every argument you offer boils down to “Shut up, Dalrock”. The reasons change, but the argument is always the same.

Based on an anonymous person’s testimony on the internet? I’m very sorry for what happened to SaltMark, but this isn’t a court of law. Let’s not play judge/jury/executioner (the SJWs do enough of that…including Wilson’s haters). None of us know the full details or truth about what happened.

Two people here claim to know Wilson. One has a favorable account and the other doesn’t. In my mind, all that does is wash out and let us know he’s neither perfect nor horrible nor someone who can please everyone.

I am forever grateful to Doug for his repeated admonishment to not read commentary, but read the Bible.

Then why does he need to be such a “prolific author?”

At that time, decades ago, Doug hadn’t gotten into publishing, and to the extent that many college students in his fold, including me, would prefer reading the “Cliff Notes”, i.e. commentaries, and thus give the Bible short shrift, his teaching was a blessing. I agree with BillyS, however, in the value of shared wisdom among men, provided it is indeed wisdom and not tripe.

But eventually I saw a shift away from that position as he began publishing, again, and again. He is a very industrious, hard-working man, and a great self-promoter. His organization grew large and lots of money started rolling in. Being a prolific writer could well keep the temporal lights on, if not the spiritual. It all seemed to be growing too commercial and Churchian for me so I left with my small family, much to the great unhappiness of my wife. We moved far away across the US.

Churchianity was rapidly infecting many fellowships, and though I took my family to participate with other churches, there were times when we didn’t attend and led my little flock in worship at home. I could not stomach the Churchian rot and tried to protect my family from it. Doing this was an abomination in the eyes of my wife. I was duly reported, secretly, by her to certain Wilsons. Eventually, at the time of our divorce, I learned that I had been judged a non-believer by them because I wouldn’t regularly attend. I refused to supplicate to her or the “leaders” of the Churchians.

At one point she had reported to the elders of one of the churches we attended that I had purchased, without her approval, a tractor for use on our property, along with other “crimes” against her and the family. They came to my home to investigate. I didn’t know the meaning of the visit, but had nothing to hide and was fully confident with where I stood in the Scripture concerning family rule. I let them interview my kids, privately. They found nothing. Finally they rebuked me for being abusive in my authority and for not being loving to my contentious wife. And then, then! they had the gall to tell me I sinned buying the tractor! I stood up, declared, “How dare you?!”, chewed them out, and marched them out of my home.

Finally, she wasn’t satisfied with getting all this cover for divorce. She enlisted the aid of the pastor and elders of a Baptist church we had once attended to launch church discipline against me – without a trial or investigation. Her words concerning the divorce and discipline were, “He deserves it!” One of the elders, an accountant, even participated with her during mediation against me to ensure she got a good deal. She did.

So yes, I’ve had a bad experience with the Wilsons and other Churchian leaders. Some suppose that makes me biased. I don’t think so, at least not completely. Having been stung by the venom of a snake makes one wiser towards snakes.

Women are all about authority structures, hierarchies, and submission to leadership when it comes to using the elders as a tool to crush their husbands into compliance. This is common in the Reformed/Reformed Baptist circles. Spiritual abuse, indeed.

There is a third alternative…. that OKRickety is both correct AND incorrect at the same time; and in some sense the same would be true of your analysis (albeit in a different manner). To wit, OKRickety is CORRECT about the bold in the following:

To be clear, I will say that I am not of fan of Doug Wilson’s writing style. It is not easy to read and excessively lengthy, tending to obfuscate what he wishes to communicate.

The point being that the “obfuscation” is in fact present, that it is also entirely intentional and it is so because it serves his [WIlson’s] purposes.

It’s called being “two-faced” — saying something in a manner that the author knows will be interpreted one way by one group of people, and yet a different way by others… this allows him to dissemble (and for others to do so on his behalf).

That’s actually a rather “skillful” (in a devious fashion) talent to have mastered. Ergo I doubt that Wilson would take offense at OKRickety’s statement, more likely he would chuckle.

Dalrock doesn’t ban those he disagrees with, only those who repeat the same points far more times than I would tolerate.

Claiming an equivalence means you do not know as much about this site as you claim. GBFM was here for a long time as was the guy who claimed to have 3 kickass wives. (I am surprised his name has disappeared from my head. I must be getting old!)

I have bumped heads with him a couple of times and even spawned at least one post, but I am still here, as just one example.

Maybe I’ve been here a little longer. It’s not important. What I intended was that I have been around here long enough to know what kind of behavior to expect.

Then why did you complain? This is hardly a place where all agree, though perhaps you are not coming to good conclusions if so many disagree.

MKT,

You are correct that a post here doesn’t prove Wilson’s guilt, but it is very consistent with what he writes, so that lends more credibility to it being true than otherwise.

Casey,

Disgusting. I would be inclined to like the movie, hopefully I never accidentally buy it. Blech.

SaltMark,

I guess the “do nothing” undermining by my past church was mild, by comparison. They just judged me in their eyes, but never took action to see if her charges were really true nor if she might have caused some of her own unhappiness.

I had been judged a non-believer by them because I wouldn’t regularly attend.

I went through my own struggle in this area. My wife kept going, but I couldn’t find a place I could stomach. At least one did consider me a backslider at best. It is also the reason my oldest son now struggles with God since my wife was the faithful one, as he sees more an more of her true character. (All my children are grown no, though disconnected since they were adopted and returned to the birth family long before the divorce.) He and I have ironically developed a better relationship through this.

Based on an anonymous person’s testimony on the internet? I’m very sorry for what happened to SaltMark, but this isn’t a court of law. Let’s not play judge/jury/executioner (the SJWs do enough of that…including Wilson’s haters). None of us know the full details or truth about what happened.

Guess what though, you’re right. So………………….. how about women, the church leaders and everyone who claims this defense on Wilson’s behalf also use it for the countless fucking men who are run roughshod over in the courts of the land and by their own churches. How about that, eh? What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, or is it perfectly A Okay for Wilson to judge others but not them of him? Remember, he is the one who was going around lambasting men he knew nothing of but for the words of the women in his congregation……

MKT @ 10:59 am:
“Also, when you write under your real name and lead a church/ministry/school/etc, the stakes get MUCH higher.”

They get LOWER when you have an organization backing you up. Most of us, we’re individuals who can be easily isolated, impoverished and ruined. When you have your own platform and the funding to not only survive a lawsuit but retaliate in kind, it’s a completely different situation.

The only reason Wilson would be at greater risk for telling the truth than us is if his success is built upon lies and original sin.

“Dalrock doesn’t ban those he disagrees with, only those who repeat the same points far more times than I would tolerate. Claiming an equivalence means you do not know as much about this site as you claim. “

I have been reading and posting here for about three years, and for at least a year on Wilson’s blog, so I think I can reasonably claim I know both sites fairly well.

Do you know that Wilson bans those he disagrees with, or are you assumingfeministhater knows that for a fact? I trust what can be reasonably established, and I know that Wilson did allow several commenters to continue for quite some time that I believe he would disagree with. For example, a commenter who was an avowed atheist or agnostic. If he didn’t ban them (and I have no evidence to suggest he did), I have grave doubts that Wilson bans “those he disagrees with” but only, much like Dalrock, those who are egregiously troublesome, for example, InsanityBytes.

Repeating myself, I see no significant difference in the banning behavior exhibited by Dalrock and Wilson.

“Then why did you complain?”

I shouldn’t have. It’s one of my behavioral patterns that I have never learned to avoid. It’s exacerbated when my expectations are too high.

“They get LOWER when you have an organization backing you up. Most of us, we’re individuals who can be easily isolated, impoverished and ruined. When you have your own platform and the funding to not only survive a lawsuit but retaliate in kind, it’s a completely different situation.”

This makes no sense. Random internet commenters (e.g., you and I) can be as bold as we want and can make practically any claim. What’s the worst that can happen? Get banned from certain blogs…or even social media? Is that really a big deal if we’re anonymous?

Wilson doesn’t have a “big” platform. He has his own platforms (church, microdenomination, etc.). It’s not like he has the Southern Baptist Convention or Christianity Today behind him. And if he did, they’d hang him out to dry in a heartbeat if he got too controversial (especially on the conservative/patriarchal end of the spectrum).

I’d really like him to provide his account to Wilson on his blog and see if Wilson would address it.

Having been cut free and crumpled at the base of the whipping post, one has little stamina for further contention.

Besides, from experience, arguing my case with Doug on his blog would accomplish little in the greater scheme of things. Doug is quick on his feet and wily. I am clumsy. The more serious problem is the poisonous teachings spewed forth from Churchian leaders. That’s the root of the problem. It requires deft champions with stamina to fight against this outrage.

“I have grave doubts that Wilson bans “those he disagrees with” but only, much like Dalrock, those who are egregiously troublesome, for example, InsanityBytes.”

I’m not sure if he truly banned her (he might have) or changed his commenting policy because of her. Either way, she was more troublesome IMO than the “40 ACRES & A KARDASHIAN” character…who got banned a lot faster. She got to the point where she’d derail anything he wrote on male/female relations and make totally absurd claims. I disagree with his policy and actions on her. He should’ve given her a warning or two then booted her much sooner.

Speaking of forked tongues, I believe your statement is an argument from silence. I have stated here that I am frivorced (my story has many similarities to SaltMark but I did not provide it in that kind of detail). Did you give me more than crickets? I don’t think so. Your point is discounted accordingly.

I don’t care, your moral grand standing isn’t impressive.

A simple question. Do you believe Doug Wilson is wrong for the things he has said and done to men over the generation or more that he stated he had done these things?

OKRicketyIn other words, Dalrock and others should go directly to Wilson with disagreements.

You’ve said this before. The last time Dalrock challenged Wilson, in fact, your objections eventually reduced down to this point. Well, ok, that’s a valid position.

Yet when Dalrock criticized Matt Chandler? John Piper? Mark Driscoll? You did not say this. Why?
What is special about Doug Wilson that you seek to defend him – only him, not any other celebrity preacher?

I understand that there are a lot of Christian men that have been frivorced by “Christian” wives. I understand that in many, many situations churches and church leaders believed the woman and put all the blame on the men.

I am not attacking SaltMark. As a man, I am prone to believe him.

BUT, but, but, on SaltMark’s specific charges we have not heard Doug Wilson’s side of the story. Therefore, we should reserve judgement and not rush to condemn Doug Wilson, Jim Wilson, and others until we query them.

We recently condemned Gary Thomas for ruling on women’s complaints without talking to their husbands first. I was one of the commenters that condemned him and I still stand by what I wrote against him. Thomas was wrong not to get both sides of the story. We need to be consistent and also get both sides of the story, or withhold judgement.

Pastor Doug is a good man, husband, father, pastor, and brother in Christ who (like all of us) has blind spots. The blind spot that Dalrock points out happens to be very common among Christian men, especially those of Pastor Doug’s age.

[…]

Were I to move my family to Moscow, ID, or Pullman, WA, I’d take my family to Pastor Doug’s church happily and without reservation. These days, that’s saying a lot.

I have no problem with this assessment. In fact, this blindspot of Christian leaders is probably the situation every Christian man has to deal with right now. I am glad Scott, for example, has found a bit of refuge in his Orthodox church. We can each probably find leaders who are good on soteriology or the Sacraments, respective to our denominations. But I suspect that such refuge–just like for all of us–is conditional on the wife’s disposition. It is one thing for a priest to dispense the literal teaching. That is good. It is another to find that priest and his congregation an ally when your wife starts complaining that you are something like an “emotional abuser”. That is dubious, at best.

@Wilson’s Would-be Defenders

But why “pick on” Pastor Wilson?

The Bible instructs us to admonish brothers privately, and leaders publicly if there are two or more in evidence. Some here (not Oscar) are playing a shell game where in one moment Doug Wilson is a mere brother in Christ, and in another he is a Christian leader. The game is meant to distract, confuse, make fools of us; as all such games are designed to do.

I can’t speak for Dalrock, but for my part: Doug Wilson isn’t engaged as a target because he’s an especially bad pastor. There are many worse; perhaps most are worst. I don’t know and it doesn’t matter. Doug Wilson is engaged because he has started a public conversation by having a blog. By definition it is acceptable for each of us to engage in forwarding or disputing public ideas. Welcome to the Internet, our Areopagus. It is doubly licit because Doug Wilson is an actual Christian elder. And in my opinion the open rebellion of wives and children–with either support or apathy from Christian leaders–is THE problem of our times.

If you don’t think Wilson is part of that, I encourage you to go read my comment here:

where I briefly examine three posts–each suggested by his blog. This is the same one Eidolon recommended. Wilson displays a reliable and gleeful pattern for over a decade of blaming Christian men as creatures worthy of disrespect, and excusing women as near innocents under our tyrannical sway.

For any who wish make comments on Wilson’s blog regarding his post Masculinity without Permission or otherwise, Wilson has finally posted today. I expect comments at Letters are Better Than Fetters to be open for about 48 hours.

Although Wilson addresses that post a few times, I am quite disappointed that Wilson seems to have neglected Hmm’s questions.

Looking for straight up fuck not the slow stroking kind but the hair pulling ass pounding sweaty kind you get with anger and revenge please if interested reply with a pic and you will get mine and more if interested thank you……………….Send me your number

I don’t know how real these ads are, but there are many of equally low quality. Lower quality than in the past. Thrashier. More broken beyond repair.

My most recent Craigslist date was in 2010. I actually found a few rusted needles in the haystack, including two “Christian” women. But now it’s all hay. Dirty hay.

“Do you believe Doug Wilson is wrong for the things he has said and done to men over the generation or more that he stated he had done these things?”

I’m not being obtuse, but I would like you to provide some better context to understand what you mean by “these things” that you think Wilson has stated he has done. I ask because I suspect you are interpreting the usage of text like “we”, “church”, and “church leaders” to necessarily include Doug Wilson.

The only answer I am willing to give now is that when Doug Wilson has taught or written contrary to scripture, he has done wrong.

I can’t speak for Dalrock, but for my part: Doug Wilson isn’t engaged as a target because he’s an especially bad pastor. There are many worse; perhaps most are worst. I don’t know and it doesn’t matter. Doug Wilson is engaged because he has started a public conversation by having a blog. By definition it is acceptable for each of us to engage in forwarding or disputing public ideas. Welcome to the Internet, our Areopagus. It is doubly licit because Doug Wilson is an actual Christian elder. And in my opinion the open rebellion of wives and children–with either support or apathy from Christian leaders–is THE problem of our times.

Brilliantly put. I would add that my intent has been to focus on this conversation, and specifically on Wilson’s written words and not on the man himself. I may have been imperfect in this regard, but it has been my intent. Very few of Wilson’s defenders are willing to defend his ideas, and instead want to change the subject to him as a man. When I pointed out that Wilson wrote that wives of sinning husbands should be like Abigail instead of Sarah (wildly mischaracterizing Abigail in the process), the response was:

Shut up Dalrock. Wilson is a good man!

When I pointed out that Wilson longed for a time when feminism was powerful enough to require a reflexive bashing of men, but not so powerful that bashing men was more than we could afford, the response was:

Shut up Dalrock. Wilson is a good man!

Click on the Doug Wilson tag at the bottom of the OP to find many more examples of this pattern over the last two years. He may well be a very good man in many ways. But this is an attempt to change the subject away from what he is writing.

“Yet when Dalrock criticized Matt Chandler? John Piper? Mark Driscoll? You did not say this. Why?
What is special about Doug Wilson that you seek to defend him – only him, not any other celebrity preacher?”

There are two reasons:
1. I am opposed to false teaching. As well as I can remember, the criticisms of those men were valid. I do not think the criticism of Wilson is nearly as valid, if at all. That’s what makes Wilson “special”.
2. I am unaware that any of those men have blogs where one could easily address them “directly”, nor any other way to do it. Wilson does, so it would be easy to address him “directly”.

Imagine if someone said this to St. Paul after he corrected St. Peter in the New Testament. “Shut up Paul! Peter is a good man!”

Whether Wilson is as a good man is a separate issue than whether what he has said about masculinity is good. Good men deserve criticism when they’re wrong, and their ability to accept criticism indicates how good a man they actually are.

If there is one thing I have learned in the last ten years is most folks don’t change their minds, and if they do it’s done slowly over time with overwhelmingly massive evidence. So I don’t expect to change anyone’s mind. But here I go anyway…

By using many of your own metrics both Paul (and Christ) were guilty of the same charges Doug Wilson is. They often said, “wives submit to your husbands.” and then in the very next sentence were forced to remind husbands to love their wives, make sure you treat her as you’d treat your own body, don’t be harsh etc. Were they speaking out of both sides of their mouths? If all that was important was to make wives submit why is it only mentioned four times in the New Testatment?

It is really easy to get caught in the frame of viewing everything through the feminist lense but until you’ve been on the front lines and had to lead men and women in real life. I get it. Feminism is everywhere. Women are infected to their very cores. But so are lazy, lustful, mean, angry and hateful men all around and even in our churches, certainly on the internet reading. Until you have to lead both you have no idea what you are talking about.

If I parsed and analyzed each of your words, or certainly my own, the way you have parsed this brothers- well we are all guilty as hell and certainly due for exactly that. If you are looking for fault everywhere I promise you that you will find it even in the most faithful. Thank God for the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ.

You are experiencing what has existed in that church community from years and years ago, a particular fanaticism then known as “Dougism”, adherents being “Dougites.” I was a Dougite until I turned. I was angrily assailed more than once if even a hint of criticism was mentioned about Doug. It kept people in line.

Nevertheless, you are right – this isn’t, or shouldn’t be about Doug personally, but about holding him accountable for the damaging things he teaches.

“Doug Wilson is engaged because he has started a public conversation by having a blog. By definition it is acceptable for each of us to engage in forwarding or disputing public ideas. Welcome to the Internet, our Areopagus. It is doubly licit because Doug Wilson is an actual Christian elder. And in my opinion the open rebellion of wives and children–with either support or apathy from Christian leaders–is THE problem of our times.”

Exactly. I respect Pastor Doug, and I’m glad Dalrock is pointing out his blind spot, precisely because it’s so common among Christian men, especially those of Pastor Doug’s age.

By the way, I used to have the same blind spot, and I suspect many others here did as well. Being relieved of it was one hell of a rude awakening. It hurt. But, again, as the word states…

Proverbs 27:6 Faithful are the wounds of a friend,
But deceitful are the kisses of an enemy.

Wounds hurt. Kisses feel good. Pain wakes you up. Kisses lull you to sleep. I’m glad that Dalrock is dealing out some faithful wounds, as opposed to kissing up. Hopefully, Pastor Doug will wake up, and hopefully he’ll awaken other prominent Christian elders. But that may not happen. It’s good and right that older men lead the Church. The Bible calls Church leaders “elders” for a reason. But the downside is that they’re set in their ways. It may be that this “problem of our times” won’t get dealt with until Church leaders who are in their 40s today are in their 60s, like Pastor Doug is now. If that’s the case, when we get to that point, we need to remember that we too have blind spots. And there may be younger men pointing them out to us.

I’m not sure what you did, but I don’t see the comment in the Letters are Better than Fetters post, so I suspect you have “submitted a letter to the editor” by putting your text into the “submission” box which says “enter your text here” then clicking “submit”, rather than creating a comment using the “leave a reply” section (below the “submit a letter” section) where you put your comment in the box that shows “join the discussion” then clicking “post comment”. It’s just about as confusing as some of Wilson’s writing.

“Until you have to lead both you have no idea what you are talking about.”

“If I parsed and analyzed each of your words, or certainly my own, the way you have parsed this brothers- well we are all guilty as hell and certainly due for exactly that.”

Is this a debating technique where you specifically try to position yourself as above the tactic you use, or are you simply engaged in being passive aggressive to attempt to provide plausible deniability? Your peacemaking salvo is to assume the worst about Dalrock and the commenters here, then use your assumption to disqualify anyone who disagrees with you from having a valid opinion?

So you don’t know Wilson’s banning policy (nor do I), and I’m reasonably certain that feministhater does not know, either, in spite of his earlier claim. I do see now that I unintentionally implied that Dalrock bans people because they disagree with him. I apologize for that, Dalrock.

Wilson can come and explain his point of view here if he likes. My guess is he doesn’t like that much – no ability to control the conversation. People saying things he doesn’t like, mean, naughty words and such, not enough decorum for Wilson.. he’s all about them platitudes and niceties after all.

Wilson bans those he doesn’t agree with, those he scorns. He doesn’t allow real open debates. Hence his likeness for ‘Tuesday Mailbag’ or ‘Thursday Content Cluster Muster’ bullshite.

Churchian poseurs, of which Doug Wilson is just one example among hundreds, despise Scripture (most of it, anyway, unless it somehow can be twisted to justify accommodating the World). Maintaining a comments section in their blogs with anything short of an iron fist and stainless steel ban hammer means allowing people to use Scripture to show them not only the egregiousness of their error, but the willful deceit by which they spread it. Such commentors are dangerous to the mission of worldly heresy that is essential to the poseurs in their quest for fame, wealth, and popularity. Such are not “team players.” They are not “nice” (“nice,” along with feminism, being a key pillar of churchianity).

In short, Doug and ilk would destroy themselves if they were forced to defend themselves from the Scriptural truths they seek to ignore and avoid.

I’m not being obtuse, but I would like you to provide some better context to understand what you mean by “these things” that you think Wilson has stated he has done. I ask because I suspect you are interpreting the usage of text like “we”, “church”, and “church leaders” to necessarily include Doug Wilson.

The only answer I am willing to give now is that when Doug Wilson has taught or written contrary to scripture, he has done wrong.

Taking one thing with another, over the years I have seen many instances of men doing awful things to their wives and daughters. And when I say “awful,” I mean awful. Their abusive treatment has ranged from wicked to blindingly stupid. Not only do I not excuse it or explain it away, I rejoice in the liberty that I still have in such instances to call sin sin…

Now I know that some women have done awful things to men also, and I take it as a given that this can and does happen. I do not assume that the man must be the worst offender. But in the counseling I have done over the years, the thing that usually wrecks the woman’s joy is not the fact that her sin is equivalent to the man’s, or greater than the man’s, or less than the man’s, but rather the fact that her sin is untouchable. We are dealing with a culture-wide insistence that women not be held responsible for what they do. This assumption has crept into the church, even into the conservative wing of the church, and has now been weaponized.

When the authority of a husband turns rancid, a wife should receive the help of fathers, brothers, friends, and/or elders to help her stand up against it. I have been involved in this sort of intervention more than once.

We’ve discussed this all before. The actions that he has done up above, that of interventions and bullying men from the pulpit, calling many behaviours ‘abusive’ whilst stating that he’s sure women do these things too, he just doesn’t seem overly concerned by this though. He mocks men time and time again.

At some point in every husband/wife relationship, there will be a clash of wills. When that happens, it is often the case that the husband gets owned and he loses. Let us be blunt, and call it what it is. However, we live in flattering times, and he has been given sufficient cover by the church to retreat demurely into his designated background, and to call what he is doing “servant leadership.”

He calls men abusive, he calls them wicked, he calls them stupid, he calls them cowards. Constantly. AMOGing all the damn time. And then writes a post about how this has caused a dearth of responsible men who are willing to stand up to women. No shit. Yes, he did the things that caused the issue in the first place. Right in front of your eyes.

I’m not being obtuse, but I would like you to provide some better context to understand what you mean by “these things” that you think Wilson has stated he has done. I ask because I suspect you are interpreting the usage of text like “we”, “church”, and “church leaders” to necessarily include Doug Wilson.

The only answer I am willing to give now is that when Doug Wilson has taught or written contrary to scripture, he has done wrong.

Doug Wilson said:

Taking one thing with another, over the years I have seen many instances of men doing awful things to their wives and daughters. And when I say “awful,” I mean awful. Their abusive treatment has ranged from wicked to blindingly stupid. Not only do I not excuse it or explain it away, I rejoice in the liberty that I still have in such instances to call sin sin..

Now I know that some women have done awful things to men also, and I take it as a given that this can and does happen. I do not assume that the man must be the worst offender. But in the counseling I have done over the years, the thing that usually wrecks the woman’s joy is not the fact that her sin is equivalent to the man’s, or greater than the man’s, or less than the man’s, but rather the fact that her sin is untouchable. We are dealing with a culture-wide insistence that women not be held responsible for what they do. This assumption has crept into the church, even into the conservative wing of the church, and has now been weaponized…..

…….When the authority of a husband turns rancid, a wife should receive the help of fathers, brothers, friends, and/or elders to help her stand up against it. I have been involved in this sort of intervention more than once.

We’ve discussed this all before. The actions that he has done up above, that of interventions and bullying men from the pulpit, calling many behaviours ‘abusive’ whilst stating that he’s sure women do these things too, he just doesn’t seem overly concerned by this though. He mocks men time and time again.

Doug Wilson said:

At some point in every husband/wife relationship, there will be a clash of wills. When that happens, it is often the case that the husband gets owned and he loses. Let us be blunt, and call it what it is. However, we live in flattering times, and he has been given sufficient cover by the church to retreat demurely into his designated background, and to call what he is doing “servant leadership.”

He calls men abusive, he calls them wicked, he calls them stupid, he calls them cowards. Constantly. AMOGing all the damn time. And then writes a post about how this has caused a dearth of responsible men who are willing to stand up to women. No shit. Yes, he did the things that caused the issue in the first place. Right in front of your eyes.

MKT @ 1:05 pm:
“They get LOWER when you have an organization backing you up. Most of us, we’re individuals who can be easily isolated, impoverished and ruined. When you have your own platform and the funding to not only survive a lawsuit but retaliate in kind, it’s a completely different situation.”

“This makes no sense. Random internet commenters (e.g., you and I) can be as bold as we want and can make practically any claim. What’s the worst that can happen?”

Ask doxxed bloggers from Vox Day to (attempted) Boxer. The worst that can happen ain’t pretty. Which is a higher risk, having the single, weakening defense of anonymity or having the money and followers to actually push back against your enemies?

Don’t imply to me that these clergyboys have no choice but to do evil in order to survive. They’re the ones with allies, resources and opportunities yet they don’t even try to do right behind closed doors.

I am going to suggest you learn to read with comprehension, with a specific focus on understanding the difference between using “men” to be every man on the planet, and “men” as a subset of the first instance. In other words, “men” is not always equal to “men”. Argue otherwise all you want, but that’s the way the language works.

Yes, Wilson “calls men abusive, he calls them wicked, he calls them stupid, he calls them cowards.” However, the context of the first three instances states “I have seen many instances of men doing awful things ….”. He did NOT say ALL men do awful things. In the last instance, the context states “… it is often the case that the husband gets owned and he loses. […] However … he has been given sufficient cover by the church to retreat demurely ….”. He did NOT say ALL husbands. You can insist that Wilson meant all men but it is very clear that he was referring to a subset of men in those instances. I presume you would agree that some men are abusive, some men are wicked, some men are stupid, some men are cowards, or some or all of the above.

Before I forget, it is possible that Wilson’s mention of these behaviors may well be excessive, but it is also possible that you have “reading goggles” (like “wife goggles”) that highlight those passages mentioning some men are problems and gray out those mentioning the failures of women.

But so are lazy, lustful, mean, angry and hateful men all around and even in our churches, certainly on the internet reading.

Appeals to balance or fairness miss the point, because “the husband is head of the wife as Christ is head of the Church” is as unbalanced and unfair as it gets, and not everyone gets a turn at being the head. Anything other than this will be unbalanced the other way.

I’m going to guess than many men here entered marriage in good faith, ready to be bestest friendses with the new wife, ready to set aside the whole headship-submission thing because we’re in this together as a team, sipping tea and chatting and rubbing noses all snuggly on the couch, etc., etc. Only to get broadsided by some astonishingly cunning and underhanded and ruthless, yet plausibly deniable tactics to make sure he knew who was boss, which is not fair. Only to learn that treating a woman with fairness doesn’t get fairness in return; snuggles don’t return quid pro quo, which would be fair and balanced. Only to realize that she sees marriage as a power struggle, and she probably can’t help it but she needs help doing something about it.

Wives don’t play by the rules as though they were men, which is to say by logic and reason and fairness, and I’ve come to the conclusion that women understand and appreciate only one language, and that is the unfair language of being ruled. They will not be ruled until you rule them. And how that works out in your house is up to you, and we owe it to our brothers to let each one rule his house as he sees fit, and to encourage them when their wives are rebellious. This is not the first time we’ve discussed these things, and our friend Empathologism used to write about it a lot in his blogging heyday.

It’s not that each sex doesn’t have its own natural particular foibles, it’s that the natural particular foibles of women are suited to be ruled by the natural particular foibles of men. There is no balance, or there’s balance only in being unbalanced in this particular way.

I am going to suggest you learn to read with comprehension, with a specific focus on understanding the difference between using “men” to be every man on the planet, and “men” as a subset of the first instance. In other words, “men” is not always equal to “men”. Argue otherwise all you want, but that’s the way the language works.

Oh FFS. This isn’t even the point. You’re obfuscating again, like always. He mocks and ridicules and blames men for everything. That you cannot deny. It doesn’t matter that he doesn’t say ‘all men’ because the damage has been done. The damage that he complains about is caused by the constant put downs done by him and other pastors.

that highlight those passages mentioning some men are problems and gray out those mentioning the failures of women.

Okay, go pull out some passages where Wilson calls women abusive, wicked, stupid, cowardly and properly so, not like the above where he’s sure there are ‘some women’ who do this. I want you to show some proper passages calling out women exactly in the mean and threatening manner he does so to men. Show an intervention, like he did on so called ‘abusive husbands’, where he calls out the women and tears her to shreds.

Gunner,
“Don’t imply to me that these clergyboys have no choice but to do evil in order to survive. They’re the ones with allies, resources and opportunities yet they don’t even try to do right behind closed doors.”

I never said anyone had to do evil. And again, Wilson isn’t a “clergyboy” with major resources and big denominations (SBC, PCA) or organizations (Gospel Coalition, Focus on the Family, etc.) backing him. He’s on the fringes of conservative Presbyterianism–outside the bigger denoms (which are getting more liberal all the time). He’s no John Piper, Russell Moore, etc.

Very few of Wilson’s defenders are willing to defend his ideas, and instead want to change the subject to him as a man.

I was thinking about what you said, and it occurred to me that the problem with trying to argue with Wilson’s followers is that their argument is not the logical argument Wilson himself may be making. Instead, they use this one:

Wilson says A
Wilson is an Authority
Therefore, A is True

When you demonstrates that A is instead False, you’ve not only destroyed the original argument Wilson put forth. But, by the law of contraposition, Wilson’s followers hear:

Wilson Says A
A is False
Therefore, Wilson is not an Authority

It comes across as an attack directly against Wilson to their minds. The whole thing hinges on who Wilson is to them.

1. I am opposed to false teaching. As well as I can remember, the criticisms of those men were valid. I do not think the criticism of Wilson is nearly as valid, if at all. That’s what makes Wilson “special”.

You’d have a better point if it weren’t for the fact that Dalrock has criticized all of the above on the same grounds. Wilson’s obvious errors regarding men and women are largely identical to the errors of Chandler, and Piper, and Driscoll.

2. I am unaware that any of those men have blogs where one could easily address them “directly”, nor any other way to do it. Wilson does, so it would be easy to address him “directly”.

My search engine turned up at least one blog for Piper and Driscoll. What did your search show?

This is clearly an emotional lissue for you. Every time the slightest criticism of Doug Wilson is posted here you show up with various arguents that always reduce to “Don’t Criticize Wilson!”. Only you can figure out for sure why that is. It is a clear pattern now.

“The Bible instructs us to admonish brothers privately, and leaders publicly if there are two or more in evidence.
[…]
It is doubly licit because Doug Wilson is an actual Christian elder.”

I think you’ve made this claim before. I find the first sentence incomplete and misleading or inaccurate. If so, the second sentence is not a logical conclusion.

Here are the steps of Biblical discipline as found in Matthew 18:15-17:
1. If your brother sins, show him his fault in private. That is, one accuser in private.
2. If he does not listen, take one or two more. That is, two or three accusers in private.
3. If he does not listen, tell it to the church. That is, make the accusation in public.
4. If he does not listen, “excommunicate” him.

Here are the steps of Biblical discipline for an elder as found in 1 Tim. 5:19,20:
1. Do not receive an accusation against an elder unless there are two or three witnesses.
2. If he continues in sin, rebuke him in public. That is, rebuke him in public.
Note: There is much disagreement in the translations regarding the phrase “continues in”. It would be consistent with the Matthew passage. It also seems excessive to go through this process if the sin was only a one-time offense.

Note: The steps for discipline of an elder do NOT end with the possibility of “excommunication” but only public rebuke. This leads me to believe the type of sin involved would be elder-specific, for example, false teaching. I also think there SHOULD be a third step: If the elder continues in sin, he will be removed from the eldership. Perhaps that is not stated, supposing an elder would NEVER continue to sin.

It is my belief that the first discipline process does, in fact, apply to elders, too. It would be used if ANY member engaged in sins such as homosexual activity. I don’t think God or Paul would be okay with ONLY rebuking an elder in public if, God forbid, he were to continue in homosexual sin.

Note that Step 1 of the elder discipline process does not specifically state if it is to be done in public or private. Considering the similarity of the processes, I wonder if, in the case of an elder-specific sin, the accusation against the elder would first be made in private. This would be analagous to Step 2 of the usual discipline process. If the elder discipline required another step, then it would be done in public just like Step 3 of the usual process.

From that, I think it is true to say “The Bible instructs us to admonish brothers first privately, then publicly. Leaders are to be confronted only if there are two or more witnesses, and rebuked in public if they continue sinning.” There is simply insufficient evidence to state with certainty that the accusation against an elder should first be made privately or publicly.

In the case of Doug Wilson, we are certainly considering the elder-specific discipline process. However, an additional complication arises because Wilson is not being accused by witnesses from his congregation.

Normally, in the case of an elder-specific sin, I would expect the witnesses to be from his congregation, and based on all of the scripture above, I am inclined to think the first accusation should be in private, and, if continued, rebuked in public.

I don’t see that one can make a strong argument from the Bible of how Wilson should be treated. My ideal would be to contact his fellow elders and have them investigate the accusation and, if they agree with the charges, pursue it privately. Wilson would only be rebuked publicly if he continued the behavior.

Practically, I think those steps would be difficult to accomplish, and I still think the best realistic option is to address him on his blog. If he does not respond or change, then I would consider the appropriate next step to be publishing the accusation elsewhere for public perusal.

Dalrock said: “Very few of Wilson’s defenders are willing to defend his ideas, and instead want to change the subject to him as a man.

We disagree on what “his ideas” are. I’m not going to defend non-scriptural teaching and belief, which is what I believe is being presumed to be “his ideas”.

I don’t think I have yet succeeded here in getting anyone to even consider changing their opinion about what Wilson truly believes. I haven’t, either. As I said earlier, my expectations are often too high.

You have laid out church discipline to a fault, except one thing: “If your brother sins against you” – a private sin. The object of discipline in Matthew 18 is to keep the circle of knowledge of a man’s sin as small as necessary to heal it, and to call in only as many witnesses as necessary to bring repentance. But when the one under discipline has drawn the general public in of his own accord, there are already sufficient witnesses. In such case t public rebuke is proper. After all, he would need to repent publically anyway.

Doug is writing publicly, therefore if what he writes is sinful it may be addressed publicly without the private intervention first. Paul opposed Peter to his face when he withdrew publicly from eating with Gentile believers (Galatians 2:11-14).

As one of those who instigated this whole thing, I was bothered by the seven letters Doug chose for his answers to his original post. Two were from MGTOW apologists, an easy target. A third says the choice is between a woman who will submit and celibacy. Doug thinks it’s a false dilemma, but approves it as presented.

Of the others, one argues with the terminology “lean in”. Another asks for an estimate of whether today’s fatherless epidemic is worse than after the Civil War. A third tells that the PCA uses Doug’s definition of servant leadership. And the final one is about Abigails (women with lousy husbands). It is only this last one that Doug indicates he wants to say more about.

I don’t mind that he didn’t answer my questions, but he didn’t really answer anything like them.

Hmm says: “But when the one under discipline has drawn the general public in of his own accord, there are already sufficient witnesses. In such case t public rebuke is proper. After all, he would need to repent publically anyway.”

I still think the truly loving behavior would be to follow the Matthean discipline passage. Assuming the sinner stopped before step 3, I think it would be good to let the church elders decide if a public confession and repentance would be beneficial and edifying to the church.

Not trying to be difficult but I am curious if and how you think church discipline should be applied in the case where the sin is not known to the general public but is not a “sin against you”. For example, suppose a Christian is having sex regularly with a discreet prostitute. Only they know about it until I and 2 other Christian brothers discover it by accident. I don’t think that is sin against me. It’s not known by the public at large or even the public (at small?). I presume you do not think it should simply be ignored. Should I take step 1 of the Matthean process? Step 2? Do I go to step 3 and publicly accuse?

Take that scenario one step further. I am the only one who discovers this sin. Do I go to step 1? How could I go to step 2 or 3 when I am the only witness?

Ephesians 5:6 Let no man deceive you with vain words: for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience.
7 Be not ye therefore partakers with them.
8 For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light:
9 (For the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth;)
10 Proving what is acceptable unto the Lord.
11 And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.
12 For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret.
13 But all things that are reproved are made manifest by the light: for whatsoever doth make manifest is light.
14 Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.
15 See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise,

Wilson should not make a habit of bashing men fighting for control of their homes and placating rebellious women. He is on the wrong side there. Deference should always go to the leader (the husband) in matters concerning unsubstantiated accusations. Christ followers are called to suffer unjustly.
1 Peter 2: 20 For what glory is it, if, when ye be buffeted for your faults, ye shall take it patiently? but if, when ye do well, and suffer for it, ye take it patiently, this is acceptable with God.
21 For even hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps:
…1 Peter 3:1 Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; that, if any obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives;
2 While they behold your chaste conversation coupled with fear.

If you read 1Peter 2 into 3 in context, you get that we are to be subject to rulers and their general rules for our lives, even when we don’t agree. We slaves are to be subject to our masters in their direct micromanagement of our lives, even if and when they beat us unjustly. That we have been called to suffer, and Christ is in fact our example in suffering wrongly. And that “Likewise” wives are to be subject to their husbands. Like a man to his governor, like a slave to his master, like Christ the righteous suffering torture and death at the hands of sinful men.

A Godly woman with a black eye quietly subjecting herself, because of conscience to God, to an abusive husband and reviling not in return would be an unimpeachable and powerful testimony of Gods transcendent love. A testimony likely to touch all who saw it. (without a word)
How weak and selfish and Godless a testimony is an angry wife railing on against her husband about “verbal abuse” because he ventured to try to offer some criticism of his wife’s unfaithful behavior.

Unfortunately this misandry is common in this the most adulterous age of the church yet. The reason the church is losing out to Hollywood on every front in the battle for hearts and minds, is not because God does not have the power to overcome the World, but because the Losers running the churches have ditched God’s Word and God’s ways in order to have friendship with the World, which is enmity with God. These Hirelings need to be exposed for their complicity in being Satan’s tools. Even though much of what they preach may be good, no error should ever be tolerated, It is blasphemy to put your own fool ideas, or popular culture into God’s mouth. And to do it for financial gain is robbery. When you buy your bread and pay your bills with money given to the Lord, on condition that you preach His Word, and then preach that men should have instead “hearkened unto the voice of thy wife”,(the second sin) you are stealing from God. Will a man rob God? Wilson should fear God, knowing that he is under “greater condemnation”.

In both instances, the sin is not public, so I think starting at Step 1 is in order. The one (or ones) that see the sin should go privately first, in order to obtain a confession and repentance.

Of course, if the sin is seen by only one person and the sinner denies it in front of witnesses, there is little that can be done. Two or three witnesses are required. But these don’t need to be separate people. In the case of rape, the woman’s testimony may be one witness, and forensic evidence another.

This is clearly an emotional lissue for you. Every time the slightest criticism of Doug Wilson is posted here you show up with various arguents that always reduce to “Don’t Criticize Wilson!”. Only you can figure out for sure why that is. It is a clear pattern now.

I’m about to conclude that OKRickety is either a senior member of Wilson’s church or a member of his extended family. I can’t think of any other reason why anybody –especially from the manosphere– would be so heavily invested in defending him.

I think Dalrock did this Doug character up a few years ago? Could be off there because I’m on the oldish side of old, and sometimes my memory can . . . uh, something something. I forgot.

Anyway Doug’s blog is Blog and Mablog, a play on Gog/Magog that passes for wit in bibull skool. I remember visiting Doug’s blog, briefly, years ago, after which he banned me I think. Did I mention about my memory?

Doug’s sub-head is Enraging the Culture, positioning himself knightly as a radical, feerless ‘outsider’ Christian. Requisite for selling room-temperature culture-fed Christianity. Which like many Prot ‘churches’ these days is a mini cult-of-personality, which appeals to females across time and space. ‘Religion’ in the East also is personality-based, especially Hinduism and Islam. Gurus and all the rest.

Professional Christianity is long established denominationally, and the majority of false ‘pastors’ re-arrange standard cultural assumptions (that could be found, for example, on evening television) and paste it over the Holy Bible. There is a hierarchy of Celebrity Christianity in American Protestantism, and there is widespread submission to mass-approved doctrines, the most dominant and destructive of which is feminism — so, essentially, goddess-worship, with Christian ‘leaders’ colluding instead of the usual fire, drums, and chanting crowd.

“Motherlessness, the fierce suppression of the mothering instinct, is the immediate cause of an abortion. But that motherlessness is, in its own turn, a function of fatherlessness. This all happens because fathers have believed the lie that it is possible for them to opt out of the creation mandate.”

And that’s what you’ll hear from any of the P.C. (Professional Christian) hierarchy of personalities. Sorta like the ever-bickering and warring Greek ‘deities’. Just less exciting.

In this instance, FATHERS believed ‘the lie’ and opted out of the ‘creation mandate’. This resulted in mass fatherlessness, 50+ million abortions, and the ‘fierce suppression of the mothering instinct’ across the nation. It ALL happened because FATHERS etc. etc.

Got that? It was you all here that effed EV-ER-Y-THING up, you caddish vermin you, and double-damned if Douggie isn’t here — like the other scripture salesmen in modern America — to kick some man-butt, sell some books (his, not the Bible, rube) and make his wife and church-worshippers feel validated in their, ah, fellowship.

So not to dwell but yes FATHERS of America it definitely was YOU at fault for . . . everything bad plus whatever we decide is bad next. And you are being necessarily (but lovingly!) chastised by your nations, and by righteous marriage-expert, literary icon Douglas Wilson. He will mend your ways, and you’ll hew to whatever he comes up with tomorrow. Soon as he untangles his own confoozled spider-web narratives.

While Douglas rose the Christian Book Industry likewise throve, the towns died, children of the future were murdered, the sons of the nation were dispossessed (State and ‘church’) and the men were replaced in education, employment, and authority by females. Little boys around the U.S., crying themselves to sleep at night for their daddies. Abuse of boys, and suicide of men, increasing greatly during the feminist/churchian tenure.

You see a store link on this website Douglas? You Fund Me? Donations? Do you understand that the things you write on the internet or elsewhere are offerings before Holy Jehovah, who you name yourself a servant of and pastor for? Just checking because the birds are about done singing, then they’re taking a fire-hose to the Temple.

Douglas you and your Intervention Team are welcome to show up in my doorway any time, to set me straight. Wouldn’t that be the lark.

Doug were I you I’d chuck it, apologize, go anon, mebbe live in a cardboard box someplace. An old chicken coop. Get a gig on the pipeline. Pump gas in Oregon. It’s never too late until it is.

Reblogged this on Patriactionary and commented:
His fanboys and fangirls will always defend him, and blindly hang on his every word. I know an individual who previously belonged to one of his churches; extremely bright, but utterly indoctrinated.

I see a lot in some of the comments above that reminds me of the Jordan Peterson / Cathy Newman interview. Doug Wilson says “there are some” men whose masculinity is practiced in a toxic fashion, and I think any honest man with eyes would have to agree. Commenters then say “Dougie says masculinity is toxic”. Doug nuances “servant leadership” away from masculine abdication and some here stubbornly conflate it with Arterburn and other similar views because he still uses the same words. So I think there’s a level of dishonesty in some of the comments I read above.

On the other hand, this is probably what the blue-pill and feminist readers will themselves take away from Wilson’s words, since they tend to absolutize “some” to “all” (at least when it suits their purpose). So commenters here are doing with his words what the feminist side will do anyway, and reacting on that basis.

It requires an indescribable level of naivete and a profound depth of stupidity to believe that Wilson’s output is “countercultural.”

His fanboys and fangirls will always defend him, and blindly hang on his every word. I know an individual who previously belonged to one of his churches; extremely bright, but utterly indoctrinated.

That’s modern western churchianity in a nutshell: zoologically lazy people, of varying IQ levels, who cannot be bothered to read and absorb Scripture for themselves. They instead fall in behind a “professional Christian” who will pre-chew and digest it all for them. All the better if his pre-digested corruption of the Word lets them basically continue their worldly existence while burping up vaguely spiritual platitudes that require no effort or thought.

“I’m about to conclude that OKRickety is either a senior member of Wilson’s church or a member of his extended family. I can’t think of any other reason why anybody –especially from the manosphere– would be so heavily invested in defending him.”

I am not a member/attendee of Wilson’s church or any church in that denomination(?), nor am I related to him by blood, marriage, or professional association. The only relationship is that we are both Christians. And that I follow his blog (but I follow Dalrock’s blog, too, so what does that really prove?) I cannot prove otherwise; It’s like asking “Are you still beating your wife?”.

The fact that you can think of no other reason to “defend” him is not surprising. Many here are emotionally invested in finding scapegoats for the multitude of sins resulting from feminism. It’s far more satisfying to focus on one scapegoat than to face the daunting reality that the problems are widespread and will require much time and effort to be corrected.

I see a lot in some of the comments above that reminds me of the Jordan Peterson / Cathy Newman interview. Doug Wilson says “there are some” men whose masculinity is practiced in a toxic fashion, and I think any honest man with eyes would have to agree. Commenters then say “Dougie says masculinity is toxic”. Doug nuances “servant leadership” away from masculine abdication and some here stubbornly conflate it with Arterburn and other similar views because he still uses the same words. So I think there’s a level of dishonesty in some of the comments I read above.

You’re taking the piss, right?

Servile Leadership causes the problems Doug laments. It’s not some different form of servile leadership doing the damage whilst he has the right of it. Don’t be demented.

Another quote from Dougie Boy. Absolving women of their sins.

We are dealing with millions of cases. It is the view of politically active pro-lifers that the penalties should fall on those who know what they are doing. Medically trained doctors know exactly what they are doing. The ghouls at Planned Parenthood know exactly what they have been selling.

And the view about the mothers, taken as a class, is that they have been fraudulently manipulated into a form of negligent manslaughter.

So say that all this postmillennialism stuff is true, and a thousand years from now we have believing magistrates, a faithful people in the main, biblical laws, and all those unfortunate people who were born with a critical spirit have no scope for their blogging talents. Everything in the civil realm is exactly as it ought to be. What would the case be then? Could there be any penalty then? The answer here is of course, but it is an of course that requires very careful exposition.

Do you gents just forget these and move on? Has Doug Wilson asked forgiveness for any of that tripe? Providing cover for women who were given 100% reproductive rights. The women has the final say on everything to do with procreation or are we going to pretend that men someone can all weasel their ways out of this when the threat of jail time and child support exists over his head?

Another quote from Wilson. How many more of these do you think it takes until men simply tell him to F off?

Entitlement: if the young man in question has a sense of entitlement about things generally — grades, employment, standard of living, and so on — it should not be surprising that he is the kind of person who will just “expect” what is his due. If for some reason that drifts away from him, he will still feel entitled. The most common way this happens in marriage is that a man does not treat his wife right, they start to quarrel and drift apart, and this naturally includes their sex life, and he feels just as entitled as he ever did. And the computer is right there. If she is going to take away x, then I will compensate with y — and she can’t complain, because its really her fault. Like laziness, the root problem is abdication of responsibility. Identifying this as a possible problem beforehand should take the form of looking for a young man who seeks out and accepts responsibility, and who doesn’t make excuses.

A quote from Doug plainly stating that women are better than men.

I am a pastor, and this is a pressing pastoral problem. And I have talked to many other pastors who agree that it is a pressing pastoral problem. The nature of the pastoral problem is that of a large and growing population of unmarried women who would love to be married, and who would make good and godly wives. In the conservative church, it would not be unusual to find this cohort of women outnumbering the men in the same station of life by a factor of about 5 to 1. Some of this is caused by the church’s hostility to masculinity, resulting in men being made to feel unwelcome in the church, and some of it is caused by the men who remain being encouraged to perpetuate their teen years by a decade or so. Singleness is a gift, the teaching goes.

There is even a Doug quote that states that lack of fathers is the cause of abortion. That because men don’t step up, women go on to have abortions. He removes ALL accountability from women and places it on men. No frivorce enters his mind, men are the cause. Women causing 70% of divorces, nope, doesn’t exist. Men getting removed from their home and children, nope doesn’t exist. Men being put in prison for child support, nope, doesn’t exist… Men are to serve, lead, work, love and die whilst expecting next to nothing in return. And then wonders why men don’t care anymore.

Seriously, keep believing the bullshite sprouted. He complains that church leadership is hostile to masculinity and yet can’t stop being hostile to masculinity. That was the entire point of the post from Dalrock and from Cane’s comment. He complains about a problem that he causes all the time by his very words and actions and yet he cannot stop doing even in the post where he states it needs to stop.

To remind you what I mean..

Even when he tries to avoid blaming men–for one post!–he has to caveat that he would really rather talk about the bad men…but he won’t do it here…even though he thinks he should.

There it is. Cane said it best. It’s his damn caveats he has to say every time when talking about the necessity of men in society because, well I don’t know, must be because men are bad and he needs to warn us about this for the nth time. FFS!

“I found it very hard to follow Wilson’s latest post. He could/should do a much better job showing the words from others.”

I very much agree, and, to show how much influence I have on Wilson, I suggested he make changes to improve the readability and the response was … crickets. Stupidity, ignorance, stubbornness,…? I don’t know but I don’t respect it.

I left the following comment on Doug’s Letters are Better Than Fetters post late last night. I’ll re-post it here for the record. It still remains up on Wilson’s blog, thankfully.

When I tell men they must take responsibility, many hear me saying that they must take the blame. But these are different things entirely.

i. If men responsible and things go wrong, then they ARE to blame.

ii. So what if they’re different things? What did that distinction do for you? Re-read the following paragraph Cane quoted to you from your own pen:

Someone might interject and say that surely aborted children are motherless as well. This is true, and tragic. Motherlessness, the fierce suppression of the mothering instinct, is the immediate cause of an abortion. But that motherlessness is, in its own turn, a function of fatherlessness.

How did pointing out the distinction between “responsibility” and “blame” help you? At the end of the day, as he pointed out, you blame men even when women murder their own babies!

I can already hear your audience coming back with the brilliant defense of, ‘Oh, but he blamed fatherlessness, not fathers themselves. Wives can get rid of the father, see? The mother can be the cause of the fatherlessness, not necessarily the father himself. You just ASSUMED he was blaming fathers, but you were wrong! You assumed the worst about Doug Wilson! See? See?? You’re just biased!

Except that you immediately proceeded to write:

This all happens because fathers have believed the lie that it is possible for them to opt out of the creation mandate.

Yeah.

In other words, you do blame men; Even for women who murder their babies.

Now, how, pray tell, would people read what you wrote and ‘hear that wrong’? How could they ever come to such a bizarre conclusion that when you say men are responsible, that they are also to blame? Silly biased people just assuming bad things- Don’t they know those two things are completely different?

If you want to know why people like me and Cane Caldo are so aggressive towards you, THIS IS WHY.

What we have called for is for Christian fathers to repent first,(…)We have argued that the current epidemic of homosexual activism is the result of disobedient Christian fathers, and so we have substantial work to do within out own ranks first.

Most people would conclude that since you blamed disobedient Christian fathers, then they would obviously assume you also said those Christian fathers were responsible. You said they had to repent and all, so that’s a very natural and logical conclusion for anyone to come to. But apparently, that would be their fault, right? They’re just “hearing” you say that. You’re not saying that yourself…. Except that you are.

I believe that husbands are commanded to imitate the love of Christ, meaning that they take responsibility.

Ah, but if I were reading what you wrote at the beginning of this post, then even if they’re responsible, they’re not necessarily to blame when things go wrong. They’re both different, don’t you see!

Does that sound ridiculous to you? I sure hope so, especially since we both know you don’t really believe that.

This is because the man is the *head.* This is not running on a parallel track with feminism, but is rather the antithesis of it.

This is muddled on so many levels.

i. On one hand, you’ve blamed men even for other women who murder their own babies.

ii. On the other hand, you want to distance yourself from those who want to blame men for everything.

iii. You try to absolve yourself from hypocrisy by explaining why you think husbands should take responsibility. This supposedly proves your doctrine is the antithesis to feminism, even though, true to a feminist mindset, you will point the finger at men no matter what sin women voluntarily commit. It doesn’t matter if women murder their own babies, that’s still men’s fault.

Sorry, but there is no way in heaven or earth your teachings are the antithesis to feminism. You can say your doctrine of headship sets you apart from them, and granted, that’s a highly specific contrary viewpoint, but in practice, you paint men with the same black brush.

I understand why you’d obfuscate as much as you do when you write. You don’t want to look like the bad guy, but you can’t refute men who quote your own words back to you, so you obfuscate with nonsense-comments like these. It does work to some degree, insofar as it takes a lot of work for men like Cane Caldo and myself to challenge you. And it’s always easier to obfuscate than it is for us to do the exhausting work of demonstrating that that’s what you’re doing.

Assuming this is the one comment I leave here, I will exhort you, brother Wilson, to REPENT. I think you are a brother, but a brother deeply entrenched in pride and deceit. You obfuscate even though you know lying is sinful. Stop it, brother Wilson. Repent. If you think true masculinity is the glad acceptance of sacrificial responsibility, then be responsible and sacrifice your pride. If Cane Caldo or Dalrock catch you being unfair to men, then repent of that too! You want Christian fathers to work within our own ranks to solve this crisis of masculinity? Start with yourself.

HmmDoug nuances “servant leadership” away from masculine abdication and some here stubbornly conflate it with Arterburn and other similar views because he still uses the same words.

Doug Wilson’s habit of writing in an ambiguous fashion is part of the problem. You see “nuance” where others see “obfuscation”. The term “servant leader” / “servant leadership” has become a code phrase for “male adbication” or “male submission”, there is reason to believe Wilson is at least vaguely aware of this. HIs attempt to reclaim the term fails because he cannot bring himself to actually define it in clear, plain, words. Rather he must endlessly perambulate in his circumlocatory meandering way, never quite reaching the point but always using lots of words to do so. This may have worked in philosophy classes, perhaps that is where he acquired the habit.

It is the antithesis of communication, however. That cannot be an accident.

Wilson’s text appears to be deliberately ambiguous, in order that he can say one thing to one audience (traditional conservatives) and another thing to another audience (feminists). In the long run this tends to fail, as we have seen more than once in the last year.

“HIs attempt to reclaim the term fails because he cannot bring himself to actually define it in clear, plain, words. Rather he must endlessly perambulate in his circumlocatory meandering way, never quite reaching the point but always using lots of words to do so.”

As an addendum let me note that just as Wilson’s partisans will doggedly read his text in the most favorable possible light, those who do not like him will read his text in the worst possible way. It’s human nature. However, Wilson could reduce criticism at least a bit by eschewing obfuscation.

That endless ambiguity may be great fun in graduate Philosophy classes, but in the real world where real men are being given real instruction – it stinks. If Wilson designed traffic signals they would randomly change from red to green, spend a lot of time stuck on amber, and sometimes all three colors would be seen at the same time, leading to traffic accidents among those people who pay attention to signals, while an increasing number of drivers ignored signals alltogether.

It is certainly not for me to decide the conclusion that you should reach en re: the above paragraph. Indeed, the notion of Free Will within the larger constraints that can be discussed at a different time and place certainly suggests this as a very real possibility. That said, asking questions of the writer can be a fruitful enterprise from time to time, provided that the questions are asked in good faith; determining the degree of faith and intent must perforce be a related but different discussion that can be had in a hearty yet winsome manner. Not every man can achieve parodies, but all can strive in that direction, surely.

“As an addendum let me note that just as Wilson’s partisans will doggedly read his text in the most favorable possible light, those who do not like him will read his text in the worst possible way. It’s human nature. However, Wilson could reduce criticism at least a bit by eschewing obfuscation.”

I agree on all counts. I think Paul had fighting our human nature in mind when he taught this: “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, …” [Romans 12:2]

Doug Wilson’s habit of writing in an ambiguous fashion is part of the problem. You see “nuance” where others see “obfuscation”.

This seems to be the one area where Wilson’s detractors and defenders are in strong agreement, even if they would use different words. As Cane notes above, he commented several months back at Wilson’s site advising him to (essentially) spit it out. Say what you want to say:

2) Don’t talk around the subject of marital roles until you have spoken plainly on the roles. This post is a good example of the wrong way to do it. So is the Wife Beaters post. In both you point to your left and *imply* those people are bad, then point to your right and *imply* those people are bad, too. Then you talk about what you didn’t mean, and what they shouldn’t mean, and what does it mean if we reflect on this string of words over here… You generally fail to make a definitive statement. Altogether the tactics and deflections are supposed to imply that whatever remains is correct, at the sensible center; because you’re Sensible Centrist Doug. But we don’t need to know if Wilson is sensibly centrist, or even if he is ever confused with bad people. We need to know if Wilson is correct. Be actually bold on the topic for a change. Don’t waste time and effort differentiating yourself from “those Bad people over there”.

Several of Wilson’s readers responded to the comment, all in agreement. CHer wrote:

Very well said.

Kevin Brendler wrote:

Second! That’s profound and helpful analysis, CC.

Ilíon wrote:

While I am disgusted by the obtuseness and lack of charity of the majority of commentary on Wilson’s piece over at Dalrock’s place, I quite agree with this comment by Cane Caldo.

There is broad agreement that Wilson has a maddening and consistent problem with never managing to clearly address whatever point he claims he is making. The difference is, Wilson’s defenders (OKRickety included) assume that Wilson’s constant obfuscation is due to a lack of clear thinking/writing skills. They may be right, but as I wrote in the OP this would be a damning defense. Writing is Wilson’s literal claim to fame (how many here would know of him were it not through his writing). He not only writes his blog, but he is a prolific author (including coauthor/contributor) of books, including books on how to write and argue clearly!

The Rhetoric Companion: A Student’s Guide to Power in Persuasion by N.D. Wilson (Author),‎ Douglas Wilson (Contributor)Introductory Logic by James B. Nance (Author),‎ Douglas J. Wilson (Author)Wordsmithy: Hot Tips for the Writing Life by Douglas Wilson (Author)

From the description of Wordsmithy at Amazon:

Wordsmithy is for writers of every sort, whether experienced veterans, still just hoping, or somewhere in between. This book exhorts writers to explore the world, to read incessantly, to love mechanical helps, to be fine with being lousy (for a while), to learn languages, and to keep a commonplace book.

Through a series of out-of-the-ordinary lessons, each with its own takeaway points and recommended readings, Douglas Wilson provides indispensable guidance, showing how to develop the writer’s craft and the kind of life from which good writing comes.

So the defense of Wilson’s consistently muddled writing on Christian marriage boils down to an accusation that he has no business trying to teach skills it is evident to all that he has failed to master! Who would want to be defended in such a way?

As an addendum let me note that just as Wilson’s partisans will doggedly read his text in the most favorable possible light, those who do not like him will read his text in the worst possible way. It’s human nature.

For my part, Wilson’s likeableness has nothing to do with it. I started out, years ago, with a favorable disposition towards Wilson. The things which changed were the accumulation of his words, and the improvement of my sight.

Those who have read various things Wilson has written don’t believe that he’s only talking about a few men, for several reasons.

1. The sheer number of references. How often does he reference bad men vs. bad women? The ratio is extremely high. He inserts references to bad men in anything even remotely negative about women, but not the other way around. He puts on the kid gloves talking about women’s faults but the spiked boots for men’s.

This puts people in a mindset of thinking about bad men at all times, which makes little sense if such men are as rare as any of our individual experience would suggest. It makes a lot more sense if you have a feminist worldview and/or you hear a lot of women complaining and you “listen and believe” whatever they say. Wives will complain a lot more to third parties about their husbands than men will complain about their wives, which should be seen as sinful and shameful on the part of the women, but is not by people like Wilson.

2. He says things that seem okay about men taking responsibility and having headship, then he saws it all off at the knees by decrying any attempt by any actual man to implement these things, and immediately believing any negative accounts from wives about their husbands. If a man has been a pushover and starts to actually take charge, there’s a high probability that his wife will be looking to badmouth him and undermine him by making an appeal to an amenable authority to tell him he’s wrong to not let her do whatever she wants. Wilson has been more than willing to be this authority and denounce the husband publicly based only on the wife’s description, without even the basic reasonable couching of “based on what you’ve said, I would interpret this as…” etc. Instead, “your husband is afraid,” “your husband is failing at X.” This is uncharitable towards the husband, it’s overstepping Wilson’s authority, and it’s interfering in her husband’s domain. It’s disrespectful and wrong towards husbands, but he has no problem with it. One wonders if he’d be happy for another pastor to tell his wife how he ought to run his own household and relationship with her.

3. The things he says which sound good are not meaningful if he contradicts their implementation. Even feminists say we have a “crisis of masculinity” and want men to fix it; saying men need to take responsibility and fix things is worth nothing.

What he has said about men taking responsibility is like saying “we should lower tax rates, but it would be mean to change the income tax, sales tax, state or local tax rates. But if you don’t find a way to lower those overall taxes then you’re a failure.” He’s happy to put blame on men for not fixing everything while telling them they’re selfish, foolish ogres if they use any of the obvious and efficacious means for doing so.

Cane and Dalrock have pointed out instances of him decrying so much as a man giving orders to the family members in his charge to do what he decides is best for the family. How is anyone supposed to do anything as a leader if he isn’t allowed to even insist on going with his decision? Oh, but Wilson thinks leading is a good thing in the abstract, so he gets total credit for that.

He’s dishonest. On any actual points of contention, where you have to say something a woman would actually get offended by and tell her to do it because God ordered her to and it doesn’t matter if she likes it or not, he wusses out and puts the blame on men for making her feel bad. He may as well be a feminist if he’s going to teach men that leading is abuse, which is what he does.

Cane, I distinguish responsibility and fault because I hold to covenant theology. When I tell men they must take responsibility, many hear me saying that they must take the blame. But these are different things entirely. We live in a man-hating age, which wants to blame men for everything. I believe that husbands are commanded to imitate the love of Christ, meaning that they take responsibility. This is because the man is the *head.* This is not running on a parallel track with feminism, but is rather the antithesis of it.

I’ve studied systematic theology and this is the first I’ve heard of responsibility and fault being different from their normal usage because of covenant theology. Piper and Driscoll were also both Calvinist.

The Noble has authority over the peasant and has certain obligations towards the peasant but they aren’t responsible for wrong doing by the peasant; they are responsible FOR enforcing justice. Any failure in something that someone is responsible FOR does carry blame.

There is always a responsible FOR, and for anything someone is responsible FOR they have authority and power to ensure its outcome. “Take responsibility” is a nonsense phrase because their is no subject to act on; it is a catch all blame machine.

Responsibility without authority is crazy making; responsibility with no defined bounties isn’t responsibility.

Dalrock He not only writes his blog, but he is a prolific author (including coauthor/contributor) of books, including books on how to write and argue clearly!

Then he knows how to communicate effectively, but chooses not to do so. One wonders why. Fear of namecalling by the more radical feminists? I’m pretty sure he gets that anyway. Nothing less than total submission to the Female Imperative’s whim-of-the-moment can ward off namecalling by some radfem or other.

Now then, according to Doug Wilson a man who can lead but doesn’t is a coward. Spineless, in fact. Ok, let’s take that idea and extend it a bit: what does that make a man who could write clearly in defense of marriage but chooses not to?

For all Wilson and his defender’s talk of the ultimate responsibility of men and husbands especially, I have not heard any suggestions from them regarding the ways and means by which a man/husband could reign in those under his command. I would love to know what these might be (or if there are any)

As Dalrock often points out, this where the dividing line is. I fear we may know the answer

“Spot on. This is what I was alluding to with “Responsibility and authority go hand in hand”. If you’re in command of the house, you’re responsible for what happens in said house. When command is looking for who to blame for a ship going down, they look to the captain.”

If a husband is in command and all responsibility lies with him, including the acts of those underneath him, it follows that he should have the final say over everything as well as the ability to discipline as he sees fit those underneath him should they get out of line. Would you agree with this?
———————————–

“Spot on. This is what I was alluding to with “Responsibility and authority go hand in hand”. If you’re in command of the house, you’re responsible for what happens in said house. When command is looking for who to blame for a ship going down, they look to the captain.”

If a husband is in command and all responsibility lies with him, including the acts of those underneath him, it follows that he should have the final say over everything as well as the ability to discipline as he sees fit those underneath him should they get out of line. Would you agree with this?
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I am getting married in November and have to thank you and many of the long time commenters for a lot of inspiration and guidance. I’ve gone through the entire archive and comment sections twice now in the past few months and your posts and the resulting discussion about marriage roles, authority and responsibility, and dissecting Churchian half-truths or lies has been incredibly helpful and inspiring.

I fully believe in marriage now and can see how good it is and my fiancé and I are going to Church more and fully intend on moving onto the Christian path. For all of this I owe you and your commenters a big thank you.

If a husband is in command and all responsibility lies with him, including the acts of those underneath him, it follows that he should have the final say over everything as well as the ability to discipline as he sees fit those underneath him should they get out of line. Would you agree with this?

On a continuum from feminazi at the far left, to egalitarian left of middle, complementarian right of middle and patriarchy at far right, Wilson falls pretty much all the way to the right as far as the protestant church in general goes – in the area of so-called “soft patriarchy”. Most of us red pill types would probably be to the alt-right, on beyond zebra. Wilson is probably at the farthest right “safe” place for the pastor of a large church (or maybe a church of any size). So in one sense it’s ironic that there is such attack here on the guy that’s closest to us.

Still, I feel the weight of a lot that has been said by Cane Caldo, Eilodon and SaltMark (others, too, no doubt) and of course Dalrock. I rejoice that in some areas it appears that Wilson’s consciousness is being raised. But even if he does come around to our point of view, there is a lot of stuff on his part that needs to be unsaid, and repudiated clearly.

[On this note, the late Eta Linnemann, a liberal Bible scholar and author who was a student of Rudolf Bultmann, was converted in the late 70’s, and, in her words, “whatever of [my] writings I had in my possession I threw in the trash with my own hands in 1978.” She then went on to write several books upholding the reliability of Scripture.]

Wilson is probably at the farthest right “safe” place for the pastor of a large church (or maybe a church of any size). So in one sense it’s ironic that there is such attack here on the guy that’s closest to us.

That’s a pretty bleak statement considering how Doug Wilson has personally and deliberately encouraged wifely rebellion (not counting how he has indirectly done so in written form to untold tens of thousands of readers). With friends like these, who needs enemies?

OKR,
Take a lesson, if you can, from the previous post by Hmm. He hits the loving attitude you say you are aiming for, but he has fight and draws a line with specificity about Wilson. The more I read you, the more I hear, “Shut up. “

One thing I just thought of – Wilson’s wife Nancy has written a couple of books (at least) to the women. It would be interesting to know what’s in them – while he is “challenging” the men, what is she teaching the women? I haven’t looked into them (because “women’s books”).

I see a half-dozen plus on the Canon Press site:
Learning Contentment: A Study for Ladies of Every Age
Virtuous: A Study for Ladies of Every Age
The Silver Lining: A Practical Guide for Christian Grandmothers
The Fruit of Her Hands: Respect and the Christian Woman
True Companion: Thoughts on Being a Pastor’s Wife
Building Her House: Commonsensical Wisdom for Christian Women
Praise Her in the Gates: The Calling of Christian Motherhood

Some of the titles look promising, especially the one about contentment. Maybe Wilson leaves specific teaching of the women to Nancy.

Doug Wilson: “I believe that husbands are commanded to imitate the love of Christ, meaning that they take responsibility.”

Isaiah 53:5 But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.
6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.

Our transgressions, our iniquities, we have gone astray, our iniquity again, I’m just not seeing that he takes responsibility for our wrongs. I see Christ as laying blame where it is due, and maintaining his own innocence throughout the Bible.

James 1:13 Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man:

So God not only denies responsibility for our sins, but He even denies that He is ever the cause of our temptation. So, if a husband is to be like Christ, he shouldn’t be taking responsibility for a wife’s sins he did not commit, nor responsibility for a wife’s temptation to be unhappy with the husband God has joined her to except for that portion of temptation that is actually verifiably directly attributable to his own sins and no other cause.(like if he was causing her to be exposed to temptation by denying her sex contrary to 1 Corinthians 7:2-5) And even his sins should be forgiven by a wife who also expects to be forgiven of her own sins by his Maker.

For me to take “responsibility” for my wife’s sin is crazy. I have no control over it, and unfortunately very little influence on it, I can’t make her right with God, and Christ has already done all that can be done to make her right with God. Part of her proper repentance is to take responsibility herself for her own sins, and as “Spiritual Leader” I should not be stealing that ownership of her sins that is crucial to her repentance.

Rollo Tomassi likes to say don’t listen to what women say, look at what they do. I think the same thing can apply here. Wilson can talk all he likes about Christianity, writing reams and reams. But when problems occur and he has to deal with them, what does he do?

In the case of Natalie Greenfield, Wilson wrote to the court on behalf of her rapist, to defend the man. He blamed her father, and stoked the situation into a divorce. That’s what he does when these things confront him.

Natalie’s blog looks like it’s gotten a little old, so I’ve included an archive link to the image of the letter Wilson sent her father.

“So, if a husband is to be like Christ, he shouldn’t be taking responsibility for a wife’s sins he did not commit,….”

Jesus did not take the blame for our sins, nor was He at fault for them. But didn’t He take responsibility for our sins, ones He did not commit, when He died on the cross?

If you research the concepts of responsibility, blame, and fault, I think you will find that the experts say these are actually different. Now, I still struggle with the concepts and couldn’t explain them. I think you will recognize that blame and fault are indeed different. If X is at fault for sinking the ship, it is possible, although illogical and untrue, to blame Y for the sinking.

If I remember correctly, the most common misunderstanding with these three concepts is believing that blame and responsibility are equivalent. I don’t know if that is responsible for the communication difficulty here or not, but I do think the general public uses these concepts interchangeably which can lead to problems. If you’re interested in learning more, I recommend searching for those three words.

If you research the concepts of responsibility, blame, and fault, I think you will find that the experts say these are actually different.

Responsibility requires authority, blame and fault do not. They are merely the consequences following an action.

In marriage today, husbands have been stripped of authority by church and state. Taking responsibility in such a climate is a fool’s gambit. The problem with pastors is that they declare themselves authority in many cases, thus they are the ones with responsibilities for all of the marriages under their wings. Wifey always go to authority on these matters and we all know that isn’t her husband. Case closed.

The idea that husbands must take responsibility for their wives sins like Christ does for ours is a step too far. The sins we commit in this world are still blamed on us and we still get punished for them. Christ’s sacrifice wasn’t to take responsibility for our sins but to cleanse us of them, to make us pure when we die so that we can enter heaven. This requires that we repent of our sins and submit wholly, without restriction to Christ. I’m yet to hear from Wilson that women are to submit completely to their husbands without reservations and in everything. The internal contradiction of saying a husband is responsible for a wife’s sin whilst saying that Christ died for all our sins, kinda makes me laugh…

In the same vain, husbands are to wash their wives in the Word. It’s more than just a symbolic gesture, it’s an act of sacrifice. Making someone understand, through the Word, why their act was a sin and thus be able to be cleansed by allowing them to repent and be sinless. That is what a husband should be able to do.

Christ’s sacrifice wasn’t to take responsibility, blame or fault for our sins. He did the only thing he could do to allow us to return to the eternal life we enjoyed before the fall. His sacrifice was to die for our sins, the death itself was the punishment mankind endured because of our fall. His death was to be the final sacrifice so that we can return to our Father.

Final Sacrifice guys, you all get that. Men are not required to be sacrificial lambs for bitches.

OKR,
If You want to say that Jesus took “responsibility” for my wife’s sins, he only did it in a way that “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (Rev.13:8) could. I cannot absolve her sin, and that has been decidedly unnecessary from the foundation of the world.

I looked up Responsibility in the dictionary like you recommended, and was reminded:

1 Timothy 6:4 Anyone who teaches something different is arrogant and lacks understanding. Such a person has an unhealthy desire to quibble over the meaning of words. This stirs up arguments ending in jealousy, division, slander, and evil suspicions.

I’m not referring to you in specific with that verse, but to the folks who defend false teachers false statements in general.
I think if you have to quibble over the meaning of “responsibility” because Doug Wilson is wrong about what he said in every sense of the word, except in some divine sense in which I as a sinner cannot follow in Christ’s footsteps, then you’re really reaching to save his errant statement.

I don’t know Doug, and haven’t read too much of his stuff, but it is plain to me that he spends way too much time trying to make “God’s Word” acceptable to the world. He robs it of its divine power when he waters it down and tries to make it less offensive. He is wrong to do that.

Most of the dictionaries indicated in at least one of their possible definitions that “responsibility” was resultant from control. If I recall correctly folks like Doug and his ilk claim that exerting your control over your wife is abusive. So, if I get him correctly; I’m not supposed to exert control over my wife, but I’m supposed to bear responsibility as if I had. He is wrong. And I’ll go a step further and tell you why. Because he is engaging in what false teachers do:
2 Timothy 3:5 Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.
6 For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts,
7 Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.

If Doug was not ashamed of the Word of God he could preach it like I did up above where I showed that God intends for Christians to suffer abuse for Him in the same way as He did for us. We and our wives should be willing out of conscience towards God to be martyred rather than to break our marriage vow before God, or to be forced to give up any article of our faith. I don’t hear anybody preaching that. Nobody tells the “battered wife” to turn the other cheek. Not that there are as many battered wives as the feminists make believe. I saw a video of a woman getting battered today, and it literally made international news. But Churchians will fall all over themselves and deny the Bible in a knee jerk reaction to avoid being seen as enabling wife beaters, or slavery. I don’t recommend wife beating but forbearance, or slavery but freedom, But God tells us, the wife, and the slave, to submit when beaten unjustly, a behavior Christ Himself modeled for us up to the point of crucifixion. The church should go back to preaching selfless sacrifice instead of selfish frivorce. The unhappy wife should be told to consider it all joy if she has truly been considered worthy to suffer for the cause of Christ, but to be cautious because they are often suffering most from greed, envy, lust, vanity, impatience, or some other character deficit of their own choice.

Mark 8:38 Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation; of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.

There were a lot of false teachers in every generation of the church, but the reason that this is the most adulterous generation yet, and the reason why suddenly even marriages throughout the church can’t hold together, is because the vast majority of preachers in this generation are teaching falsely because they lack the spiritually descended testicles to preach the Word of the all wise God to folks who consider it foolishness. They’re cowardly and lazy hirelings unworthy of the money they pilfer from those who are seeking God.
I give my thanks and respect to Dalrock for publically calling false teachers on their published folly.

OKR, you are right, you didn’t say you were trying to be loving. That’s my interpretation of your refusal to specify any individual sentences of the OP that you agree with and your gymnastics at giving Wilson the benefit of the doubt and your desire to approach him privately.
I am at a loss at what you want from this OP. Do you wish Dalrock to apologize for writing it and then to say he will only do such writing privately, at least to Wilson?

“… your refusal to specify any individual sentences of the OP that you agree with ….”

I am uncertain what you mean by “the OP”. This post by Dalrock, his Harkening Back post, Wilson’s post, something else?

Regardless, even if I did agree with some portion, why would it be necessary for me to express that? I wanted to express my disagreement, not my agreement. Supposing you consider expressing some agreement important, do you also apply that standard to Dalrock? I may have missed it, but I don’t recall Dalrock expressing any agreement with anything Wilson in the past week or so of discussion of Wilson.

Your mention of apology brought this to mind: Apologies and admissions of personal error are almost non-existent on this blog . For example, when I corrected Cane Caldo’s statement that Wilson had shut down comments, there was no acknowledgement, much less an apology. In a similar vein, when I informed him that I did not see his post on Wilson’s blog and provided a likely explanation, Cane did acknowledge I was correct but expressed no gratitude. I’m not suggesting that this blog should be a genteel ladies’ tea, but I do believe men should be respectful of other men. I admit that I have not been especially respectful, either (although you can see that I apologized to Dalrock in the comments above) but, instead, I play by the rules as enforced.

Since you clearly don’t know what I want from this OP, I have failed to communicate. Since I believe few care what I want, except perhaps as another opportunity to disagree with me, I am not going to try to clarify. If you really want to know, try reading my comments on these posts again.

“I looked up Responsibility in the dictionary like you recommended, ….”

I did not mean the dictionary, but to see what the experts consider responsibility, blame, and fault to mean and their relationship. An example is this article: The Responsibility/Fault Fallacy. I think it is possible that you misunderstand what responsibility actually entails. I am certain you know what it means to you but it is possible that you don’t know what responsibility actually means. Similarly, I think I know what Wilson believes, but it is certainly possible that I am wrong (but so far I am not convinced).

Presumably you would agree that communication is difficult if the parties do not understand each other. An example would be a disagreement on the meaning of “responsibility”. I am not quibbling about responsibility in order to defend Wilson, but have been confused about about its meaning myself on multiple occasions and still find the concepts peculiar.

Perhaps we have some legal minds reading who could provide insight on these three concepts. Novaseeker?

I think things are quite horrid today, but they have been bad before and will be bad again. That is the way things will go until He returns and rules with a rod of iron, as the Scriptures say.

Read about Ancient Israel (the northern kingdom) just prior to its fall for an example. They were very prosperous outwardly, but quite corrupt inwardly.

What are called “The Dark Ages” (a possible misnomer) had their own problems as well.

We should not shrink from persecution, but we should not seek it out either. It will happen to varying extents, but enough will come without getting an attitude expecting it. That just leads to foolishness as well.

Preach the Word and let the chips fall where they may.

(This reply was mostly inspired by Sharkly. Some reasonable points, but some silly things woven in.)

I did not mean the dictionary, but to see what the experts consider responsibility, blame, and fault to mean and their relationship. An example is this article: The Responsibility/Fault Fallacy. I think it is possible that you misunderstand what responsibility actually entails. I am certain you know what it means to you but it is possible that you don’t know what responsibility actually means. Similarly, I think I know what Wilson believes, but it is certainly possible that I am wrong (but so far I am not convinced).

Blue Pill churchian thinking is a phase most of us have gone through and we sometimes forget what it was really like. This post reminded me.

When I was younger words and definitions were really important, it is a step in trying to figure out the rules. The “experts” will help me learn the rules, although I still always feel confused afterwards… These experts keep jumping around with terms, justifying articles trying to tease out a meaning between two words for no reason and always throwing in personal anecdotes and tired out phrases; the basic sermon structure, you’ll start to see it more if you know how to look for it.

From the article you posted:

“The more we choose to accept responsibility for in our lives, the more power we will exercise over our lives.”
– ‘you don’t have power because you didn’t accept responsibility, I’m going to ignore that women can have lots of power while taking zero responsibility because it isn’t like there are different forms of power.’

“There are far better values he could adopt in his dating life. For instance, “I only want to date women who like me for who I am” would be a nice place to start. But he did not choose this value. He likely wasn’t even aware that he was capable of choosing his values. Even though the man did not realize it, he was responsible for his own problems.”
-‘you’re success is all based on your mindset, I changed my thinking and got success; it had nothing to do with status and power in which I’m blind to the dynamics of.’

“A lot of people hesitate to take responsibility for their problems because they believe that to be responsible for your problems is to also be at fault for your problems. ”
-‘Its easy, just take responsibility without fault even thou this is a nonsense phrase’

“We are responsible for experiences that aren’t our fault all the time.”
No, you’re responsible for your reaction not the experience. See how easy it is understand things when you aren’t trying to brute force words to do more work then they are supposed to because you are trying to sound deep.

“Fault is past tense. Responsibility is present tense. Fault results from choices that have already been made. Responsibility results from the choices you’re currently making every second of every day.”
-‘Depression is past tense. Happiness is present tense. Depression results from choices that have already been made. Happiness results from the choices you’re currently making every second of every day.’
The more loaded phrases are, the less useful they are. People write about compound ideas to hide their skill level in dissecting things. It is a false high for the audience to feel like they are learning while receiving nothing useful.

“My first girlfriend dumped me in spectacular fashion. She was cheating on me with her teacher. It was awesome.”
-‘See how cool and hip I am.’

I did not mean the dictionary, but to see what the experts consider responsibility, blame, and fault to mean and their relationship. An example is this article: The Responsibility/Fault Fallacy.

The article goes on a sort of roundabout way of saying that you are responsible for yourself. Your thoughts, your feelings and your actions. That the things that happen in your life are your responsibility in how your choose to act towards them. In the end, it doesn’t explain how anyone can take responsibility for another or their sins because that would be a contradiction on them taking responsibility for themselves.

You can be ‘responsible’ for a family, a car, a house, a business, in as much as you provide their care, food, maintenance or running costs; but you cannot be responsible for the decision of someone else. It violates the idea of responsibility. You can only ever be responsible for yourself. You are the only person you can control with direct thought. Every other person under you requires authority upon which to control their behaviour.

The differences are just another obfuscation. In the end, when Wilson says the responsibility sits on the husband, he is expecting the husband to do the work and mend the marriage. When someone is to blame, they are usually expected to do the mended – that’s how it works after all. If we expected the blameless to mend the problems, you could just imagine the amount of guilty people we would have…

Taking the example used in the article.

For example, if you woke up one day and there was a newborn baby on your doorstep, it would not be your fault that baby was put there, but the baby would now be your responsibility. You would have to choose what to do. And whatever you ended up choosing (keeping it, getting rid of it, ignoring it, feeding it to your pet parrot), there would be problems associated with any of those choices and you would be responsible for those as well.

The baby isn’t your responsibility as he states, the responsibility of the baby still belongs to the parents, however, your responsibility relies on you making a decision on what to do with said baby in the immediate now. What he’s talking about here is a short-term societal contract that makes specific obligations on all of us. The same moral obligation placed on men when the Titanic sunk. Just how much societal persuasion do you think that took? What did men gain for that sort of sacrifice? Didn’t work so well on the Concordia as those sorts of societal obligations are winding down.. they are not moral without the underlying societal respect gained by those that do them.

@ Wraithburn
RE: Greenfield links
I am aware of this situation. It is beyond deplorable. What drives Wilson to excuse and support evil, whether the evil of the cult of feminism or of criminals? It’s perplexing – on the one hand he bashes men, yet on the other he defends rapists? His behaviors are as contradicting as his writings.

“There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.”
~Elie WieselAs posted by victim Natalie Rose Greenfield

How does Wilson penning another circumlocutory excuse for himself change the fact he blamed Natalie’s father for the abuse she suffered, then supported her abuser in court? Is he incapable of taking it like a man, admitting to his part in the sordid affair and apologizing, but must instead shift focus to her father and strain the man’s marriage to the breaking point?

This is not the first time this has happened in the Wilson circle. Homeschoolers Anonymous has an account of the case of Jamin Wight, a convicted child molester who began a sexual affair with a 13-year-old girl when he was 23. Libby Anne at Patheos has more. At the time of the abuse, the Greenfield family (Natalie Rose Greenfield was the victim; she has come out as Wight’s victim) were members of Wilson’s church, and Wight was a parishioner at affiliated Trinity Reformed, pastored by Peter Leithart. In 2005, after it all came to light, Wilson wrote to Gary Greenfield, the father of the abused girl, saying his irresponsible conduct in the situation (the Greenfields allowed Wight to live in their house, even after he said he was interested in courting their underage daughter) left the Christ Church elders “just as distressed” as they were by Wight’s abuse of the girl. You can read the entire letter here, in the original. Leithart and Wilson appeared in court alongside Wight at his sentencing; the victim of Wight’s crime was unaccompanied by either pastor.

Blame follows responsibility. It does not precede it. That is why the baby analogy if in error. You did not have any responsibility for the baby being placed there, so you have no blame for it. You do have responsibility on what to do about the situation and will have blame if you make poor choices, as you correctly note.

It sounds like omniscience is being expected of fathers here. I can note from personal experience that preventing bad things in some cases is extremely tough, even with full diligence, especially since most fathers have to work a job and cannot follow a daughter around 24×7. They would be labeled something nasty if they did as well.

Talk about gratitude…I only went back over to Wilson’s blog to demonstrate (to you) the short-term futility of it. (Long-term, who can say?) I didn’t say that expressly because, being respectful, I didn’t want to call you out. My sense is that you are worth the effort, i.e., you and I should be on the same team.

And let’s go back to what I said which led directly to this OP: “On the Doug Wilson post: Good to see. I would like to know what brought him around.” which prompted Ilion to imply that Wilson has been correct “for years”. Then you piled-on. I suppose I could have got my panties in a bunch and whined about niceties. Instead I spent an hour and a half researching and composing a lengthy response that demonstrated Doug Wilson had:

-very recently and slightly changed, (again, which I credited to him)
-had previously been guilty of teaching full-throated men-bad women-good servant-leadership complementarian garbage for over a decade,
-and has yet to even whisper an admission of his own complicity; as I have done on my own blog, for example. Instead he says he never meant that.

You thanked me for taking the time to write that, and I responded to your thanks specifically with “You’re welcome.” Now I’m your example–from among all the commenters here–of the lack of respect and gratitude on this blog.

Your mention of apology brought this to mind: Apologies and admissions of personal error are almost non-existent on this blog . For example, when I corrected Cane Caldo’s statement that Wilson had shut down comments, there was no acknowledgement, much less an apology.

1. Why in the world should I apologize for being correct? In fact Wilson DID shut down comments altogether, totally. He has since went back and changed the policy to mostly shut down. If he banned IB2, it was only shortly before he closed comments to everyone.

2. Nor did you produce evidence that IB2 was banned. It is your belief. You might even be right. Either way: It still looks to me as if he just couldn’t stand punishing a (purported) woman and had to spread the “responsibility” site-wide.

In a similar vein, when I informed him that I did not see his post on Wilson’s blog and provided a likely explanation, Cane did acknowledge I was correct but expressed no gratitude.

Among men, saying, “You called it”, and similar phrases (“Nailed it”, “Copy that”, etc.) is a jaunty yet laconic way to show respect and gratitude. It seemed to me at the time you got that since you replied, “You’re welcome.” I now know better. And so it is only right that I say to you: Don’t be such a sissy.

I’m not suggesting that this blog should be a genteel ladies’ tea, but I do believe men should be respectful of other men. I admit that I have not been especially respectful, either (although you can see that I apologized to Dalrock in the comments above) but, instead, I play by the rules as enforced.

So you bitch about what other men do when you do it yourself? Now that you mention it, I have noticed a hole in my Inbox [cane dot caldo (at) gmail dot com; no spaces]. It is an OKRickety-sized void where there instead should be a Matthews18-styled email which expresses his gratitude for all the things I’ve ever said rightly, but then followed up with a pleasant and charitable inquiry into what may have been a mistake of mine, if OKRickety has understood correctly.

I had said upstream that this discussion shouldn’t be about Doug personally, but about his duplicity in his writings. But character is important because not only out of the heart the mouth speaks but also the soul behaves in the broader sense. Many comments here are focusing on trying to fathom the man’s writings. Look at his behaviors.

These links to the Greenfield abuses illustrate Doug et. al. It isn’t heresy, as Natalie attests in the links. He has a track record that many may not be aware of. It seems his manipulations in writing and of the church are not unlike those of the predator(s) he has defended; cunning, calcuated, deceitful, secretive.

In my estimation he is disqualified as a Christian teacher/leader so that any writings/blogs of his should be exposed, for the sake of the sheep, and dismissed out of hand.

Cane Caldo,
I hope you have better luck getting a short clear answer to your OKR question than I did.
He gave me a reading assignment and some -Wilsonian vagueness in return. He is not at Artisanal Toad level of writing too much, but like you, I can’t figure out why he has taken so long to just say something like, “If X and Y happened then I would have been expressing gratitude that I want others to express.”
Maybe his inability to be short and clear partly explains his strong connection with Wilson.
You did an excellent recap of how we got to this point.
OKR, can you say what you want in three sentences or less, in regards to the original Dalrock post?

I saw the rather terse and oblique response Wilson gave to your post. I must admit the downstream comments were much more helpful.

And since comments were removed from earlier posts, it’s no longer possible to “prove” that Doug banned MeMe (IB2). But I will testify that she disappeared from comments in the meta for about two to four weeks before Doug disabled them entirely. I thought I remembered some comment from Doug about it – but it may just have been a couple of emails stating relief that she wasn’t posting there anymore (for whatever reason).

I agree that we should be on the same team and, overall, I think we are.

Thank you going to Wilson’s blog. It appears to have been futile, but, indeed, maybe the harvest will be later. I did not select you out of spite. It was simply that I thought they were clear examples. Obviously, you disagree. I hope that our relationship improves.

“Then you piled-on.”

My perception is quite different. I do not perceive that I piled on to you. However, it seems to me that I was piled on to by many.

“TL;DR: What the fuck do you want?”

At this point, I really just want to leave the Wilson situation where it is. I disagree with the general consensus here. I’ve tried to explain my position but it seems to have been futile (just like your posts at Wilsons’ blog). I have learned from this experience, primarily that I need to lower my expectations significantly.

Doug is about Doug. He is no friend of Christian men. Why argue any longer over the semantics of his writings? He’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Gary Greenfield’s open letter to Doug describes Doug’s rise to fame, power, control and abuse. Don’t ever expect him to support the authority of men in their homes except where it plays to his advantage.

Gary states,

…it would have been like giving up my masculinity and the authority of my home to a person who had gone from being someone I respected and was proud to call my friend to being a meglomaniac and control freak.

“And since comments were removed from earlier posts, it’s no longer possible to “prove” that Doug banned MeMe (IB2).”

I don’t know what you mean by “comments were removed from earlier posts”, because the comments made at the time are still with the posts. For example, you will see the comments if you go to Possibly a Portent (posted Nov. 28th).

I know I cannot prove IB was banned, but the fact that I have not seen her post since about Nov. 28th is strong circumstantial evidence. I also think I saw something on her blog to the effect she was banned, but she did not state it explicitly as I recall.

Cane,

“In fact Wilson DID shut down comments altogether, totally.”

I apologize. You’re right. Wilson announced he was disabling comments on Dec. 6th and then, presumably due to reader feedback, began his current limited commenting beginning on Dec. 12th. It was such a short period that I had forgotten about it.

Doug Wilson is seeming like a man who fails the Scriptural command for those who stand to “take heed lest you fall.” A common problem among many men. His likely expectation that he is perfect in his theology can lead to such stupidity.

I think I am right of course, since I would believe otherwise if I did not, but I try to not be quite as arrogant as many, especially those with Calvanist leanings, seem to be.

“OKR, can you say what you want in three sentences or less, in regards to the original Dalrock post?”

Here is what BillyS said on Wilson’s blog:

“The problem I see is that he keeps taking pot shots at his own side while he runs up the hill. That makes it much harder to be fully supportive, especially if we are too busy ducking from his friendly fire.”

Here is what I see as the problem here: “Dalrock and others keep shooting at Wilson while running up the hill, even though they’re in the same unit. It’s hard to gain and hold the hill when you won’t fight together.”

Counterfeit currency works because it’s beguiling. There’s a lot about the fake that looks right, but upon closer inspection there’s plenty of subtleties that prove it’s false. It is intended to deceive. You’ve accepted a counterfeit $20 and are trying to pass it along to us.

OKR, not sure of the relevance here but your recollection is the same as my own. I read Wilson’s posts daily and with a parrot-like memory for what I find there. There was no mention of no longer posting comments from IB. The only evidence of that comes from her comment on her own blog “Dearest Pastor Wilson” on December 31 where IB says that Wilson “has rendered me quite invisible, reduced to me to nothing more than meaningless background noise, perhaps a disconcerting little squeak you suspect may well be coming from your right front wheel bearings?
I like to think I am at least that important, a disconcerting little squeak, somewhere among the grit and grime of the world. Alas, he has done this indeed, forced me to squeak impotently into cyberspace, my tiny bits of wisdom, rejected, cast aside. It’s all good, I have friends here, they know me in the outer recesses, where the cool kids don’t get to sit.”

I have no idea whether she is speaking metaphorically or whether she is saying she was banned. But Wilson never said on on his own blog.

At this point, I really just want to leave the Wilson situation where it is.

I doubt I will.

You absolutely were piled-on. Did you deserve it? Probably. Regardless the difference is that I respected you enough to make the effort back up what I said (with which you disagreed) by marshaling quotes and arguments specific to your contentions, and did not lump you with other Wilson defenders except as they actually intersected, e.g., you and Ilion. I made careful opinions backed up with evidence (such as the timeline of comments here, and the facts of comment moderation at “Blog and Mablog”. You did not–and still do not–extend me the same courtesy. You bundled your arguments against everyone and then chucked them at me. Did others, besides me, do that to you? Yes. So what? I am not them.

Then I walked with you a mile further by taking my comments to Doug Wilsons even though I believed it to be fruitless.

I have learned from this experience, primarily that I need to lower my expectations significantly.

When you start this process (and you should): Start with yourself. Lower your expectations of what you think you can change with your comments. I do not expect to change anyone’s mind; only acquit myself like a man, and to give others something to wrestle with.

And I should say thanks to everyone who went over to Wilson’s–including OKRickety, but especially PrinceAsbel. No one admitted to a changed mind, but there was a terrible disarray, and several furrows plowed that may one day bear fruit. Who knows? I don’t know who MSY is, but he did some good work, too.

“Gary Greenfield’s open letter to Doug describes Doug’s rise to fame, power, control and abuse.”

I’d be very careful with the Greenfields. I don’t have any first-hand experience with the situation, but his daughter is now a poster child of the feminist/”victim’s rights”/Spiritual Sounding Board types. Her husband has posted bizarre nude videos of himself that were part of some college art project.

From a quick glance at his blog, her dad converted to Eastern Orthodoxy, but isn’t a typical E.O. type…he’s into flat earth theory and other odd things.

This doesn’t mean his account of things is completely wrong, but I wouldn’t buy into it hook, line and sinker.

@MKT
Good warning. I didn’t share these things lightly. I personally knew all involved, except the criminals, and had interacted with them over the years at church and in our homes. Nevertheless, Doug’s history speaks for itself and is not negated by their current lives.

For example, I do not believe that this situation in any way paints Jamin as a sexual predator. In all my years as a pastor, I don’t believe that I have ever seen such a level of parental foolishness as what the Greenfields did in this.

I apologize. I do hope you will understand that, when one is piled on to, it is difficult to find the time and effort to respond to all of the many claims that are made. For you, it was one conversation; for me, it was many.

That’s the sort of out-of-context quoting I’d expect from SSM or InsanityBytes…not around here. Here’s what he wrote before that:

“In our meeting the Greenfields (who had no idea of the sexual behavior occurring between Jamin and Natalie) acknowledged their sin and folly in helping to set the situation up. They did this by inviting Jamin to move in with them, encouraging and permitting a relationship between Jamin and Natalie, while keeping that relationship secret from the broader community. They thought (and were led to believe by Jamin) that the relationship was sexually pure, but they did know it was a relationship between a man in his mid-twenties and their fourteen-year-old daughter, and they helped to create the climate of secrecy.”

Again, I don’t know all the details, but if the family (1) invited Jamin to live with them (2) encouraged the relationship and (3) kept it secret, that’s nothing like the creepy old man offering candy to girls at the park (true predator). Remember, we’re talking about a 20-something year old male with still raging hormones….permitted to have a relationship with a teen girl…and it’s deliberately hidden from the church and community. What could go wrong?

If you want to solely blame the young man here and make the father/family totally innocent, you can join the girls at plenty of feminist “Christian” blogs.

Here is what I see as the problem here: “Dalrock and others keep shooting at Wilson while running up the hill, even though they’re in the same unit. It’s hard to gain and hold the hill when you won’t fight together.”

I think your mistake is assuming others are in your field unit. Wilson’s actions and blog posts have convinced me ages ago that he’s not on my side. He tangles himself up in word sauce and dishes it out like Sunday lunch. He expects men to lead without authority and the means to discipline those under their responsibility. A recipe with clear disastrous consequences.

He calls out men to lead better whilst tying their hands behind their backs. He mocks men too, even though he knows full well the precarious situation men, fathers and husbands find themselves in under the Duluth model and feminism.

Thanks for the correction – I had been looking at earlier articles (2010), for which comments had been lost in Wilson’s last site update, and I assumed they were all gone.

A quick look shows that MeMe (InsanityBytes) was in the meta on Nov. 14, 2017 and not there on Nov. 17. There were some comments about her absence on Nov. 29. So she was either banned or disappeared somewhere around mid-November. In looking, I used the keyword “woman”, upon which articles MeMe never forbore to comment.

I beg your pardon, but it is you who is hasty and incomplete. What you point out would be fine if it were the last word on the matter. If you would take the time to read the links I posted above you will see where Natalie points out Doug’s inaccuracies and lies in these documents. This is a typical tactic of Wilson supporters. “See, Doug says this so that settles it.”

You sound quick to dismiss the truth by casting doubt upon the witnesses. And how is it that we should “be very careful with the Greenfields?” Your emotion is showing. Are you a Doug shill?

“… if the family (1) invited Jamin to live with them (2) encouraged the relationship and (3) kept it secret ….”

Having read most, if not all, of the links provided on this blog on this, I find this to be a key issue. Did the family do this or not? I don’t find either side’s account to be compelling.

The other big issue for me is whether or not Natalie has changed her story over time. Wilson states her story has changed, but I don’t think he provides evidence.

No one argues that there was sexual abuse, but what was Wilson’s complicity? Based on the totality of what I have read, I suspect the claims against Wilson are exaggerated. If there was good evidence, then I would think they would have filed a lawsuit against Wilson.

You want the backstory? That’s moving the goalposts. The point is not that Wilson was complicit in the sins committed. The point is that after he finds out, he throws shade and blames the father. No one here has addressed that. Why does Wilson feel the need to defend this man and blame the family, maintaining this position after the man himself confesses? This is the exact same behavior we all complain of that Dalrock highlights in the original post, only here the rubber has hit the road and we’ve seen what actions Wilson takes.

Does he step back and allow the courts to investigate? Does he change his mind after the confession? He did not live in that house, so how could he know what transpired other than by the testimony of the people involved. So the words of Natalie, her mother, and her father, and the confession of her rapist all stack up against Wilson and his attempt to help the young man.

The same way we talk about him starting to point out a woman’s sin and then following with many caveats on how it’s not her fault and really, the man standing next to her is to blame, we see that here. He says the man sinned, then spends all his time excusing it.

“read the links I posted above you will see where Natalie points out Doug’s inaccuracies and lies in these documents. This is a typical tactic of Wilson supporters. “See, Doug says this so that settles it.”

As OKR says, neither side is totally compelling and there’s a lot of “he said, she said” in all of this. Once again, why are we supposed to take Natalie’s word (and all of the feminist/victimization blog that support her) as gospel here?

Perhaps you spend too much time on those blogs, given your ad hominem and silly projection about my emotions…when it’s clearly you who’s getting emotional.

Oh, and I suppose that she might have changed her story over time, but we don’t know for sure. Hmm.

No one argues that there was sexual abuse, but what was Wilson’s complicity? Based on the totality of what I have read, I suspect the claims against Wilson are exaggerated. If there was good evidence, then I would think they would have filed a lawsuit against Wilson.

How dismissive. You glaringly missed what she said about the “secret courtship” so now I’m supposed to feel comfortable with your “Based on the totality of what I have read”?

The whole thing I’ve shared is about showing Wilson’s complicity and manipulation. The degree of manipulation and cover-up was a function of the degree of potential loss to him and his organization should the true narrative be heard.
Same old, same old. Attack, discredit and cast suspicion on the critics. Control the narrative. If he had nothing to hide or protect, then his maneuvers are very suspicious.

Well, you could’ve said worse, but it’s obvious you’re out of arguments. Fine with me. For kicks, here’s one of Nat’s big supporters and pals, mocking the idea of a submissive wife. Go straight to the comments for some real treats.

Thanks for the link, but I won’t bother. I maintain no associations with or sympathies for the left or anything feminist. I knew Natalie as a child. She was a playmate to my daughters and sons. I knew her father personally and can vouch for his testimony. What happened to her was unjust, whether you like what she’s become or not.

I’m not out of arguments. You put forth falsehoods. You’re a waste of time. You’re a shill.

Your defense of Wilson is that Natalie is a bad person who you dislike, and thus we shouldn’t believe what she says. I’m not talking about what she says, I’m talking about what Wilson wrote down. The same as with Dalrock, you have no defense for it. All you can do is change the subject.

And what a subject change! Supposedly there’s a “secret courtship” which the whole family is privy to, but tells no one. This platonic relationship goes on for years, until suddenly they find out it really isn’t so platonic. A 23 year old man training to be a pastor in the early 2000s, burns with so much passion he entirely forgets that a 14 year old is off limits, and his faith. He takes her, repeatedly, for years.

Finally one day, the victim changes her mind about the situation and reveals it to her parents. A conspiracy is born! They collude together, deciding they will lie about this secret courtship ever having existed, secure in the knowledge that no one else knows. But there’s a plot twist!

The young man, desperate to find some ally, rushes to Wilson’s side and reveals all. Wilson looks him in the eye, and says, “Son, even though I saw none of these events and only have your word against the other witnesses… I believe you. I’m going to step in and involve myself in this affair by writing a letter to Mr. Greenfield telling him that if he just hadn’t allowed you to be tempted, none of this would have happened. And I will write another letter to the court, asking them for leniency.”

It boggles the mind how anyone could believe the testimony of two or three witnesses on a matter.

OKR,
Determining if Wilson is on the team or not seems to be fairly disputable. Do you agree that the conflict here, over his being on the team is a negative data point?
Did Paul care if the gospel was shared by Christians or others? No, but he was firm on consequences to those who were on the team but in error.
Yes, Wilson is on Team Christian, but if that was your onlu point, which I don’t think it was, then why use so many comments on him?
But if you meant to say he is on Team Patriarchy, then I would say maybe, but his mistakes and damage seem severe enough that it is clear enough to see that he should be assigned a different position on the unit. I agree with others, some form of suspension or cessation seems prudent for Wilson. I have to imagine that you disagree with that and think a suspension from blogging and or pastoring is much too severe. Is tweaking his writing style about as far as you’ll go?

Just my uninformed opinion:
It sounds like in the child molestation cases, Doug Wilson appears to be blaming the victims to shield his ministry. Almost as though the naïve partially deserve their victimization. With Feminism’s attack on men, he also blames men (the victims). This idea that the naïve, trusting, and pure of heart, deserve to be suckered or taken advantage of is common among con men. Bernie Madoff had that same sense of entitlement. It is the opposite of how I chose believe. And I spent an impoverishing portion of my life improving the quality of life for people with disabilities, as opposed to some folks taking advantage of their weaknesses.

1 Peter 4:15 But let none of you suffer as a murderer, or as a thief, or as an evildoer, or as a busybody in other men’s matters.
16 Yet if any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed; but let him glorify God on this behalf.
17 For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God?

We have to clean up the church, and hold all including ministers accountable, before we will have much room to address our heathen culture without being called hypocrites. Again I thank Dalrock for publically calling out Doug Wilson’s published folly. If Doug Wilson wants to be a busybody involved in child molestation cases, he should not be surprised if he suffers insults for being on the same side with the evildoers. But he is only suffering for his folly not for the cause of Christ in that matter. Let the light be shined into your church, don’t be obfuscating after evil has been done. Instead expose the evil and root it out, don’t cover up, confess. God will maintain His own reputation as He sees fit, He doesn’t need anybody covering for Him, doing damage control, or acting as His handler, or to tone down His published work.

the same one’s teach young men that it is a sin to ask their wives for a drink….
our pastor teaches that it is a sin if a man expects his wife to get up at night to comfort the baby

Doug believes the same thing
the women in his church boast about how domestic their wives are
they teach the men that if their wife leaves church during the service due to a crying baby it is a sin, the man must do it and they all give scornful looks to the man that lets his wife care for the baby.

I don’t see how Wilson could be sued for blaming the dad. That is just stupidity and very little of that is valid as a charge in court.

I had my own troubled teen girls that I raised and those in the church did very little to help me, though I didn’t let an young man live in my home at the time and I cut off (or attempted to cut off) contact once I found out about some bad doing in the case of each daughter. Didn’t help, especially with others allowing for that contact. Holding me accountable is idiotic, but I could see people like Wilson still doing that.

“Same old, same old. Attack, discredit and cast suspicion on the critics. Control the narrative.”

You’re right. That behavior is commonly found today, because it works so well to convince the gullible and ignorant that you are right. In fact, that is what I find on the internet about this situation. Many sites attacking Wilson, looking to discredit him and Christ Church and any Christian who would dare support patriarchy because it always leads to abuse of women, and casting suspicion on any who dare criticize the politically popular narrative. How dare anyone doubt a #metoo or #churchtoo claim?

Many sites attacking Wilson, looking to discredit him and Christ Church and any Christian who would dare support patriarchy because it always leads to abuse of women, and casting suspicion on any who dare criticize the politically popular narrative.

To be honest, I’m not very familiar with Wilson beyond the discussions on this site, which is why I’ve been just watching (with lots of popcorn). I take it from the above quote that you believe that Doug dares to support patriarchy, and that’s why he’s being attacked.

Can you point me toward some posts of his where he unambiguously supports patriarchy? I’m curious to read his position on that subject in his own words.

“… I didn’t let an young man live in my home at the time and I cut off (or attempted to cut off) contact once I found out about some bad doing in the case of each daughter. Didn’t help, especially with others allowing for that contact. Holding me accountable is idiotic, but I could see people like Wilson still doing that.”

“You are indeed correct about my initial decision to allow Jamin in our house and that decision was based on multiple motives being: 1. To court my daughter which I called off after two weeks ….”

and, when questioned about the length of time involved, he said on 10/31/2016:

“In light of the bigger picture, whether it was a few months or a few weeks could very well be a miscalculation on my part ….”

If true, then the abuser was allowed to live in the home with the initial understanding a courtship was acceptable. In that case, it does not seem idiotic to consider Natalie’s parents to be at fault for the situation.

“To be honest, I’m not very familiar with Wilson beyond the discussions on this site, which is why I’ve been just watching (with lots of popcorn). I take it from the above quote that you believe that Doug dares to support patriarchy, and that’s why he’s being attacked. Can you point me toward some posts of his where he unambiguously supports patriarchy? I’m curious to read his position on that subject in his own words.”

There seems to be a mistaken impression that I am a Doug Wilson fanboy, presumed to be familiar with everything he has ever written. I am not, but I immediately found the following by going to his site and searching for “patriarchy”. It seems unambiguous to me, but since so many question my understanding, I’ll let you decide for yourself.

Thanks for the link, OKR. It helps to see his hatred for men in his own words.

The entire piece can be summed up as follows: God calls men to rule their families, but…

* Many men are fools and idiots
* Men will fail to fill their office, or fill it for a while and then wander off the path.
* Patriarchy will go to men’s heads and they will abuse their position.
* The word Patriarchy itself makes him feel icky.
* Men have super-high views of authority for everyone that is under their authority, but virtually non-existent views of the authority that God placed over them.
* Husbands demand submission from their families, and never exhibit it themselves.
* Men don’t know how to submit, and those are the ones that have embraced the term patriarchy.

Luckily for us, after several paragraphs bashing men, he leaves open the possibility that there might be “good Christian folk who agree with the substance of biblical teaching, outlined above, but who do not want to be confused with this particular unsubmissive tribe.”

Honestly, if that was a defense of patriarchy, I’d hate to see him criticize it.

“Do you agree that the conflict here, over his being on the team is a negative data point?”

I’m sorry, but I don’t understand the question.

“Yes, Wilson is on Team Christian, but if that was your onlu point, which I don’t think it was, then why use so many comments on him?”

I was ignorant enough to think someone might reconsider and moderate their position on Wilson.

“I have to imagine that you disagree with that and think a suspension from blogging and or pastoring is much too severe. Is tweaking his writing style about as far as you’ll go?”

I don’t see that the charges against Wilson, even if true, warrant any kind of suspension. I don’t see that Paul proposed any such action against Peter when he rebuked him for his public sin in Galatians 2. (As an aside, I suppose Catholics would find that passage uncomfortable.) If the philosophy here is to insist on denouncing everyone who fails to meet absolutely every detail of biblical patriarchy on every occasion, I think this site will be relatively ineffective. By the way, where can I find the “official” guidebook on the Bible teaching of patriarchy so I can learn what I should believe?

I have more concern about his Calvinism than I do about his purported failures in his teaching on marriage and family. I expect others would also have concerns about other aspects of Doug’s beliefs.

I’ve been told the correct [and only?] way to understand what someone believes is to take their words at face value. It appears you have done exactly that with Wilson’s words.

Presuming you think the above quote is what Wilson believes, I am utterly flabbergasted at your misunderstanding. This example, one of many you provide, serves as an excellent illustration of why Wilson should change his writing style to accomodate his potential audience. Additionally, it provides me additional reason to lower my expectations for this blog much further.

I’ve been told the correct [and only?] way to understand what someone believes is to take their words at face value. It appears you have done exactly that with Wilson’s words.

My bad. I guess.

Presuming you think the above quote is what Wilson believes, I am utterly flabbergasted at your misunderstanding.

Translation: If you only knew Wilson like I know Wilson, you would know he does not mean what he writes

This example, one of many you provide, serves as an excellent illustration of why Wilson should change his writing style to accomodate his potential audience.

I agree, but I also agree with the sentiments discussed many times above that the obfuscation in his writing is a feature, not a bug. Writing to accommodate your audience is Writing 101, and I’m sure Wilson is quite capable of doing so if that’s what he really wanted.

Additionally, it provides me additional reason to lower my expectations for this blog much further.

Because we’re not as good at reading between the lines of Wilson’s posts as you obviously are? As Dalrock said in the title, If we only knew Wilson like you know Wilson, we would know he does not mean what he writes when he says things like, and I quote, “But the Word Patriarchy Makes Me Feel Icky”.

Something else struck me as I’m sitting here – your entire response consists of taking one line of my criticism and claiming that I’m misunderstanding Doug by taking his writing at face value, while at the same time:

* Not actually telling us the correct understanding of the words “But the Word Patriarchy Makes Me Feel Icky”.
* Ignoring the other criticisms in my post (perhaps because you agree with them?)

What are your thoughts on the man-bashing parts of the post (everything between the first paragraph and the Vision Forum discussion)? Did I misread or misunderstand Wilson there as well? I want to give the man the benefit of the doubt, but without my secret Doug Wilson decoder ring, I am left with taking his words at face value.

Hey – that gives me an idea. You should set up a blog called “Doug Wilson, Interpreted”. Every time he writes a new post on his blog, you could rewrite it into plain language that even commenters on Dalrock’s blog can understand. Sound good?

“Translation: If you only knew Wilson like I know Wilson, you would know he does not mean what he writes.”

Not what I said or meant. You are, in fact, using the same logic, saying, in effect, “If you only knew OKRickety like I know OKRickety, you would know he does not mean what writes.”.

“I agree, but I also agree with the sentiments discussed many times above that the obfuscation in his writing is a feature, not a bug. Writing to accommodate your audience is Writing 101, and I’m sure Wilson is quite capable of doing so if that’s what he really wanted.”

Same logic. You are saying, “If you only knew Wilson like I know Wilson, you would know he writes with the intention to deceive the reader as to his true colors.”

As to Wilson’s writing ability, I expect he could write to his audience’s level, but he seems to be excessively proud of his wordsmithing, ignorant of his failure to communicate well to all. I have often realized, and sometimes stated, that most pastors hear only positive about their sermons. After all, most Christians have been taught that we are not to grumble or complain, so criticizing the pastor directly is unacceptable. So pastors mostly hear about how awesome their message was, building up their ego. Then, when someone actually criticizes it, they are often quite upset, and consider the criticism to be completely unwarranted. After all, how could that be true when everyone else told him how terrific it was? I would be astonished if Wilson does not have that same mindset.

* Ignoring the other criticisms in my post (perhaps because you agree with them?)

What are your thoughts on the man-bashing parts of the post (everything between the first paragraph and the Vision Forum discussion)? Did I misread or misunderstand Wilson there as well?

The problem is not your understanding of the words themselves, for example, “But the Word Patriarchy Makes Me Feel Icky”, but your understanding of how they are being used. I suspect you are already thinking “There he goes again; Wilson doesn’t really mean what he wrote.” If you’ll bear with me, I’ll try to explain.

I think the primary reason is that Wilson failed to clearly state what he was doing when he begins the “man-bashing” section. I suspect he knew what he intended to do, but he didn’t state it clearly. I will suppose you have also done that at some time. I know I have, so I am willing to overlook it.

Wilson wrote:

’Patriarchy simply means “father rule,” and so it follows that every biblical Christian holds to patriarchy. …That’s the good part.
[…]
But there are objections, some to the substance and some to the word. The first substantive objection ….’

Based on what Wilson actually wrote, I would expect most people to be initially confused. “He said he believes in patriarchy, but now he’s objecting to it? WTF? What kind of idiot would do that? Oh, wait a second. I get it now. He’s actually saying there are objections to patriarchy that are commonly brought up. Just like a good salesman, he’s addressing these objections so they will buy the product (patriarchy).”

If you will accept this explanation as true, then I think most of your list of criticisms go away. In the meantime, I am unwilling to address them all in detail.

”I want to give the man the benefit of the doubt, but without my secret Doug Wilson decoder ring, I am left with taking his words at face value.”

So far, you don’t seem to think there is any validity to my suggestions that Doug’s article might not mean what you think. You do have options beyond “taking his words at face value”. One is to avoid confirmation bias. In other words, you don’t need a “secret Doug Wilson decoder ring” if you take off the Super Duper Doug Wilson Reading Glasses you seem to be wearing.

Another option is considering the words in context. There’s an old joke about what could happen if you don’t. A man prays for supernatural guidance in his Bible reading. He opens his Bible at random and reads “Judas went and hanged himself.” He flipped to another page where it reads “Go thou and do likewise”. Context matters. I think you know that.

“Hey — that gives me an idea. You should set up a blog called “Doug Wilson, Interpreted”. Every time he writes a new post on his blog, you could rewrite it into plain language that even commenters on Dalrock’s blog can understand. Sound good?”

Yes, it sounds good. I’ll be glad to do it if someone creates a GoFundMe account with enough cash to provide sufficient compensation.

In the penultimate paragraph of his conclusion, Wilson says this:

”The point is that patriarchy is inescapable, and our only choice is between men being faithful, for blessing, and men failing, for humiliation and chastisement. The thesis is not that men are good, but rather that men are crucial. When they are crucial and selfish, a lot of bad things happen. When they are crucial and obedient, a lot of good follows.”

Yes, Wilson does say men can fail to behave in a godly manner, and, yes, he did fail to say that women often fail to live according to patriarchy. Stating the latter point adequately would be a valuable improvement to the article. While the article is written in typical Wilsonian style, I would expect that almost any reader would understand that Wilson is a proponent of patriarchy.

Prince,
You should give it up. Look at OKR’s post just before yours. That person doesn’t appear to have the reasoning ability to get there. He reads all that mush, and comes away thinking that the only fair conclusion is that Wilson supports Patriarchy and anyone who disagrees is being uncharitable. OKR hasn’t even acknowledged how reasonable it is to see him as a Wilson fan-boy. He, or she, thinks, they are just being dispassionately fair-minded. So if this post and days of comments haven’t dented them, do you think the mutual submission post will?
OKR doesn’t have an internal means to say, wow, I am a blinded fan-boy/girl irrationally devoted to maintaining Wilson’s honor. He/she won’t see a post supporting mutual submission, but instead, will know what was really meant, and it is just a coincidence that what is really meant, is biblical and in support of husbands.

I’m doing some research, but Dalrock, if you’re reading this, I would request you delete my most recent comment on Wilson’s view on mutual submission. I’m digging into his writings, and it turns out he has been teaching mutual submission here and there for a while now. I’m sure I heard him denounce the doctrine (or, at least, the phrase) before, but I can’t seem to find it. I don’t wish to mislead anyone about what he really believes.